Free Disk Defragmenter

Disk defragmenters are used to scan a hard drive for files that are being stored in other than conventional ways. A fragmented file is a file that has its data written in a non-sequential order, files that were opened but not saved, or a file that simply was saved in a location. Any of these scenarios can cause a file's access time to be longer than it should.

A disk defragmenter is used to search for files that are fragmented. The application will look for files that are not written in the correct location, in sequential order, are temporary files saved in non-temporary locations, or any other of multiple vices that make these files take much longer to access than needed. For example, it may take a hard drive 2 seconds to access a file in optimal conditions, but a fragmented file may take 4 seconds to access. This may not seem like a large difference, but most applications open multiple files at once, making a 2 second wait for each file a real world difference. Risks Using disk defragmenters are generally very low risk. However, in some very rare circumstances, a file may be become corrupt while writing its bits in sequential order. For this reason, you should always take a system backup before running any disk defragmenter.

You can get any or all of the free Disk defragmenters here:

NOTE 1: Most free disk defragmenter products are not as comprehensive as you may need. To get the full range of disk defragmenter protection, you may need to buy a full featured commercial disk defragmenter product.