The Basics of Defragmentation

The Basics of Defragmentation

Oftentimes, disk defragmentation is suggested by computer experts to boost your PC’s performance. However, only little information is provided on why such process is important to your computer. In fact, the word “defragmentation” is mostly not understood by users. Below are some information regarding this topic.
What is fragmentation?
Before you learn about fragmentation, it is important for you to understand first how your computer treats your data. Whenever you store a file, the click this website operating system will save that chunk of data into a contiguous location. This means that every part of your file is saved in one location of your disk.
To illustrate, let the data from the first file be A, and the second file B. These two files will be saved as follows:
“AAAABBBB”
As you use your computer, it is inevitable that you will delete some of your files. This creates gaps in your hard drive, which is called fragmentation. Using the same files as before, here is what happens if you delete parts of your file:
“AA_A_BB_”
If a certain file is too big to be put in a contiguous location, your computer will save parts of that file in the gaps. In our example, if you save another file, this will result to fragmentation. Therefore, your drive will look like this:
“AACACBBC”
Why is fragmentation bad fo