User's Manual

Defragment Hard Disks
In the following chapters, you will find out why it is important to do so and how you can defragment your hard
disks using the TuneUp Drive Defrag tool:
Defragmenting Hard Disks - Introduction
There are many reasons why a computer becomes noticeably slower over time. One of them is the gradual
fragmentation of the hard disk. This can be described as follows:
New files are first saved as a block to an empty hard disk one after the other. If you then, for example, deleted a
file in the middle, there would be a gap in the hard disk. Windows uses this gap later to store the next file that
you save to the hard disk. If this gap is not big enough, then Windows splits the file and stores the second half at
another location. Over time, more and more gaps are created and more and more files are fragmented into
pieces (fragments), i.e. the degree of fragmentation increases.
This really slows down the performance of your computer: Every time you call up a file, this has to be read from
the hard disk, which would of course happen faster if the file was stored in one place. In technical terms: If
fragmentation is high, the hard disk reading heads must always be realigned in order that they can load the
individual fragments of a file.
A simple way to speed up your system is therefore to defragment the hard disk. As the conventional
defragmentation often takes a long time, TuneUp Drive Defrag offers you two different modes. You can either
decide yourself how defragmentation should take place, or allow TuneUp Drive Defrag to make the decision for
you.
Find out below what exactly happens during both defragmentation modes:
Thorough Defragmentation - What is This?
This defragmentation mode arranges the newly sorted files particularly intelligently: System files used frequently
are stored at the top of the hard disk, so that Windows can find them again in no time at all.
It is clear that this defragmentation mode will take longer than simply consolidating the files. TuneUp Drive
Defrag is therefore also carried out with particularly low priority so that you can continue working almost
undisturbed. This procedure speeds up the booting of Windows considerably. Frequently used programs also
start faster. This noticeably increases the performance of the computer.
Fast Defragmentation - What is This?
This defragmentation mode consolidates all files again so that they can be read noticeably faster.
The advantage of this method is the speed with which it is carried out: The performance of your hard disk is
increased in no time at all.
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