How does a hard disk drive get fragmented?
When files are written to an empty hard disk, they are written to consecutive sectors so that they can be easily accessed. Later, when some of the files get deleted, the related sectors get released. When another file needs to be written, the released sectors are filled first and then the next free sectors in the sequence. After repeating this process multiple times, various files get scattered over distant sectors on the hard drive. To access these files, the arm of the hard disk has to move through various sectors. Thus it takes longer time to read the file than a file recorded in consecutive sectors. In this condition, the hard disk is said to be fragmented. Why should you defragment your hard drive? During defragmentation, files are rearranged on the hard disk and placed into consecutive sectors if possible. • Computer performance: Defragmentation decreases the time needed to access previously fragmented files. The performance improvement after defragmentation is proportional to th
