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Fragmentation makes your hard disk do extra work that can slow down your computer. Removable storage devices such as USB flash drives can also become fragmented. Disk Defragmenter rearranges fragmented data so your disks and drives can work more efficiently. Disk Defragmenter runs on a schedule, but you can also analyze and defragment your disks and drives manually.

In this guide, you’ll learn how to schedule the defragmentation task in Windows 7.

More Windows Seven Guides

Configuring Disk Defragmenter’s Schedule

To configure the disk defragmenter’s schedule, do the following:

1. Click the Start button, type defrag, and click on Disk Defragmenter
2. Click Configure schedule…

   

3. Choose your desired schedule (I recommend a weekly fragmentation during a time your PC is on, but will not be used.) Click Select disks…

   

4. Choose the hard drives you would like to defragment (I recommend selecting all disks unless you have a good reason not to)

   

Press OK and close the Disk Defragmenter. Your hard drive will now stay organized as you keep it in order; thus, reducing data access time.

Note: There has been much debate over the need to defragment solid state media. While I do not see the need to defragment data on a drive with negligible seek time, the opening paragraph to this guide comes almost completely from Windows documentation.

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