Buzz
Have you ever wondered what exactly 'defragmenting' means? Despite sounding complex, it's actually quite simple. Let's explore how data is stored on hard drives and how they become fragmented.
How data is stored on hard drives
Imagine how a fragmented hard drive is like this: a man responsible for reports, managing several filing cabinets. Whenever you, as an office employee, need to submit a form or retrieve a report, you have to go through that man.
If he's delivering a report for you, he'll open each drawer from A to L to find an empty space and place your report there. If no empty space is found, he'll place the report at the end of the filing cabinet. When a report is removed, your report stays in its original spot. The organizer doesn't rearrange reports but keeps them in place.
For instance: if drawers from A to F are full, and then a 100-page report from drawer C is removed, the empty space in drawer C widens. Then, if the man receives another 100-page report to file, he'll open each drawer to find an empty spot and place the report there. He'll find drawer C as a suitable spot for the new report.
The Issue
However, imagine if there's an excess space in the drawer, and the man receives a report larger than the available space. In this case, he'll divide the 200-page report into 2 parts, each 100 pages, and place one part into drawer C, while the other part will go to the end (if there's no space left). This means the report has been 'fragmented' into two parts.
After a long period, some smaller reports will be discarded. If you hand him a 250-page report, for instance, he'll break down the 250-page report and place 50 pages into drawer B, 25 pages into drawer C, 25 pages into drawer F, 100 pages into drawer G, and 50 pages into drawer K.
This implies that when you request him to submit a report for you, he has to find parts of the report in drawers B, C, F, G, and K to compile a complete report, which takes a lot of time and is indeed a hassle.
This means when you ask him to submit a report for you, he has to find parts of the report in drawers B, C, F, G, and K to compile a complete report, which takes a lot of time and is indeed a hassle.
What is Defragmentation?
Ideally, this man should spend some time over the weekend organizing the reports in order. Instead of shuffling pages inside and outside the filing cabinet, he could arrange each report in its original page order. By doing so, when you request a report, he doesn't have to open and search for parts of the report in each drawer and compile them into a complete report, saving both him and you a considerable amount of time.
Of course, there's no actual man inside your hard drive fetching your data. The 'man' in this example is the hard disk's 'read head.' If you store a large amount of data (like installing a 1GB software), the hard drive will fragment it to fill up the available space it finds on the disk.
When loading software, it takes a long time for the hard drive's read head to move around the scattered parts of the disk to read all the data. By using a defragmentation tool, the hard drive arranges and organizes the data around the drive so that all the computer's data is organized in order. This means the hard drive's read head doesn't have to move too much to read your data, resulting in faster loading times.
What about Solid State Drives?
SSDs don't rely on spinning platter hard drives; instead, they utilize flash memory, similar to a USB drive.
Without a hard drive, there's no need for defragmentation. Right?
This was a hot topic a few years back when SSDs hit the market. SSDs don't use spinning platter hard drives, so defragmentation is unnecessary.
Moreover, defragmenting an SSD can unnecessarily 'break' the SSD, shortening its lifespan. Jon L. Jacobi from PC World ran defragmentation programs on SSDs, and they didn't actually damage anything noteworthy.
Conclusion
Defragmenting a hard drive is a solution to speed up old computers, helping your computer run faster and smoother. However, it doesn't inherently explain what it does.
Hopefully, after reading this article, you have gained a better understanding of what defragmentation is and why it's done.
