Want to clear fragmented fills on Dell laptop

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Disk Defragmenter

Caution - your IT department MAY, repeat MAY be off base on this. First a bit of history.

In the old pre-NTFS file system days, the files on a hard disk were prone to being scattered in chunks all over the disk as they were written to, enlarged, modified, et cetera. In time, a LARGE file could be scattered in several dozen chunks, consuming extra time during the load of that file in to memory for usage.

Hence, the call for "disk defragmenting" - a process whereby all the scattered fragments of a file are put back in physical order and stored on the disk in one, large, contiguous block. Peter Norton, PC Tools, and various other in the late 80s to late 90s made a good living selling "disk defragmenting" software.

And, in some cases, it was worth it. If you had a large number of large files, that you loaded on a frequent basis, and did not often change, then a DDF every month of so could actually save some time.

But ever since the introduction of the NTFS file system, coupled with very fast and very large hard drives, the real need for a regular de-fragment has diminished. Files stored under the NTFS system do not fragment as easily as they did on the old FAT systems. A disk with a sub-8ms access time collects fragments probably three times as fast as an old Seagate or Maxtor.

All in all, the need for a regular disk defragment is just not there, except under specific circumstances. For 97% of all computer users, just let NTFS do its job, and don't worry about defragmenting. (Plus,FWIW, the defragment process takes a LOT of time itself, and could be stressful on an otherwise happy disk.)

There is freeware to do this look for ccleaner and a defrag prog on there site.