Once you have Smart Defrag 3 installed, you'll be very happy with its futuristic layout that offers some customization and a nice hard drive map that is a delight to read. We're not kidding about replacing, either - the program will turn off your usual defragmenter and install other programs if you don't uncheck those options during install, so be careful. This program tries to replace Windows' default defragmentation widget by being more advanced and offering more style, features, and customizations. Still, it makes up for that pestering with performance that rivals most defrag programs for Windows. It throws recommendations for other programs at you at every turn.

On SSDs, it runs a TRIM command, which can potentially speed up the operation of your drive, but it isn’t really necessary as Windows does this in the background with modern drives.Smart Defrag 3 hits all the notes you'd expect from a defragger, but it is too aggressive in terms of advertising.

On a hard disk drive, this runs a defragmentation routine. Select the drive you’d like to defragment in the list, then click “Optimize.” Drives formatted as exFAT will not appear in the list.

If one of your drives doesn’t show up, it may be because Windows 10 can only optimize drives formatted in the NTFS filesystem. The Optimize Drives window will appear, and it will list all of the drives in your system that are eligible for optimization and defragmentation. RELATED: Do I Really Need to Defrag My PC? How to Defragment Your Hard Disk on Windows 10įirst, press the Windows key or click the search box on your taskbar and type “defragment.” Click the “Defragment and Optimize Your Drives” shortcut in the Start menu. You might also need to defragment external hard disk drives connected via USB, as they may not be plugged in when Windows runs its automatic defragmentation. Still, it doesn’t hurt to keep your drives operating in the most efficient way possible. Windows automatically defragments mechanical drives, and defragmentation isn’t necessary with solid-state drives. However, with modern computers, defragmentation isn’t the necessity it once was. Defragmenting moves all of those blocks so they are located close together in physical space, which potentially speeds up read times when accessing data on the disk. Over time, the data blocks (fragments) that make up files can become scattered in multiple locations around the surface of the hard disk.

Defragmentation windows 10