Defragmentation – for convenience: defrag – is simply a long word for the process of sorting and collating the files on your hard drive. This is a utility program that has been available as part of the Windows Operating System since the early days of DOS. The earlier versions left a lot to be desired, but were mostly functional. There were a number of third-party defrag programs that were far superior to the one packaged with Windows. Today, the standard defrag is still adequate, but lacks some features which Microsoft has acknowledged and addressed with another file management program that is available as a separate download. These programs are designed for the user to run, regardless of your level of expertise.

To fully understand the process of defrag is tedious at best, requiring knowledge of the Disk Operating System and the NTFS file structure. Fortunately, a complete understanding of the mechanics is not required. It is comparable to using an automobile: you don't need to be a mechanic or engineer to drive it, or even understand what is going on under the hood. Although, you need to know enough to be able to fill the car with fuel and maintain proper fluid levels. Defrag theory is just like that.

To use another analogy, think of how you read an article in a newspaper or magazine. You find the article by the title in the Table of Contents – in computer terms, the directory. You go to the story you want to read by the page number referenced and find only a portion of the article is shown. Then, you are directed to another part of the magazine with another directory link: “Continued on Page 20.” Wouldn't it be great to have all the articles in their entirety in one place? This is exactly what defrag does, it makes the articles – files – one contiguous piece.

Just as skipping from page to page in a magazine slows your reading down, a fragmented drive is also slowed for the same reason. This is why there is a System Tool in Windows called “Disk Defragmenter.” It should be run with some regularity. All users are different, some may need to defrag every day, others can go a month between defrag sessions. As a general rule, you should defrag at least once a week.

Microsoft has written a program which is an outstanding complement to the defrag program. It is called “contig,” which is a low-level system file management tool. A Graphical User Interface – which is available free – called Power Defragmenter – is an easy way to avoid the command line interpreter syntax of DOS. A single file, folder or entire disk can be organized by this very light weight utility. In the Power mode (Triple Pass) it automatically runs the Windows defragmenter after collating the individual files and folders. This GUI is available from a number of reliable and trustworthy download services you should already be familiar with.

There are third-party defrag alternatives, however, they are hard-pressed to be a better combination than the contig and defrag program combination written by Microsoft. Several of the more well-known utility suites use the Windows defrag and scheduler to keep your system nice and tight.