RenoGeek's Computer Terms Glossary - Defrag

Your computer is always adding, deleting and moving files from your hard disk, it is a very common task. But this process is not always done very efficiently. Over time the files can get broken up into mulitple sections on the computer hard drive. The computer will still read the files as a single working valid file, but the computer will have to scan multiple places on the hard drive to read it.

Because a hard drives seek time is one of the things that can slow a computer's performance, file "fragmentation" can drag down your computer's speed over time. If you have many "fragmented" files on your hard disk, every file access takes more time. Making for a slower computing experience.

One way to stop all this from happening is to de-fragment your files. Or what many call "Defrag". To put it in a simple way defragmenting your hard disk will put the files all "back together" and make for a faster computer. Most experts will tell you to "defrag" at least once a month.

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