When it comes to re-using this file, the computer must read in each part of the file and combine them - which takes a long time.
A single file could be split up into multiple parts, all stored on separate parts of the hard drive. In other words, over time as your computer reads from and writes to the hard drive, things end up all over the place. While this blog post was originally written for Windows 7, it should also apply to Windows 8 and Windows 10.īack in the days of Windows XP - that ancient operating system that will be 10 years old this October, and which Microsoft officially no longer supports - we had the ability to defragment our hard drives using a handy tool found in the Start menu.įragmentation (in the computer world) can be a big problem - ' is a phenomenon in which storage space is used inefficiently, reducing storage capacity and in most cases performance.' 1
