Defragment your drive

• Introduction: Although files appear one after the other in the file explorer, they are not necessarily stored contiguously on the hard drive. As all files are not of the same size, files are broken into bits and shoved in any free space available.
• What is fragmentation: Consider the case when you delete a file - An empty space is created. To make this space usable any new file to be stored may be broken down to make a part of it to fit in this space. The file is now said to be fragmented, meaning that it is now stored in chunks.
• What causes disk fragmentation: Imagine if you were to repeat the process of deleting and creating files. Your disk might end up with a lot of fragmented files.
• Problems with a fragmented drive: Fragmentation may not seem like a problem at first glance since the OS is designed to handle this cleverly. But over time you will realize that the system needs more time to retrieve data from a fragmented drive. It's like storing your things in different rooms. If you were to move out, then you will have to go to each room, retrieve your things and put them in your baggage. Instead if you had all your belongings in one room it would save you the trips to the other rooms. Similarly if your hard drive is heavily fragmented your hard drive head needs to make more number of trips to access data.
• Knowing if your drive is fragmented: Your drive is probably fragmented if:
• You often hear a lot of churning while accessing files.
• Accessing files takes unusually long.
  
• The solution:
1. Go to My Computer-> Right click on any Drive->Properties->Tools tab->Click on Defragment now.
2. This will open the Disk defragmentor. Select the drive that you want to defrag and defrag it.

       After the process is completed you will feel the difference. You PC will be fast and also quiet. I bet you will miss the churning sound though... :-)

Note:

• You can select any drive in the Disk defragmentor.
• Defragment all drives if possible.