5 Effective Tips to Reduce File Fragmentation in Hard Drive

With more and more fragments, your hard drive may experience obviously poorer performance. But don’t worry. In this article, we will show you 5 effective methods to reduce the file fragmentation in your drive.

File fragmentation in hard drive is bits of data which are spread across the drive platter. It will make great impact on the read/write speed of hard drive, thereby influencing computer performance badly. For instance, if fragmentation can lead to frequent system crashes, boot up failures, strange slow I/O activities as well as file corruption like corrupt Outlook data file, etc.

Hence, in face of so many vexing issues, many users long for mighty solutions to avoid file fragmentation. However, in fact, it is impossible. Disk fragmentation is a natural occurrence and always will be accumulating when we use our computer. Therefore, what we can do is to try your best to reduce it. Now, in the followings, we will teach you 5 effective tricks.

1. Clear Temporary Files

As we all know, there are always lots of temporary files being constantly created when we work on our computer, For example, while you surf internet, a plenty of internet temporary files will appear, which will result in disk fragmentation. Thus, from this aspect, it is suggested to always clear the temporary files on your PC at regular intervals. It can reduce the fragments in your drive, and hence improving your computer performance.

2. Keep Software/Drivers Updated

In addition, out-to-date software or drivers can increase the fragments as well. So, you have to ensure that they must be the latest version in your hard drive. To be specific, you ought to check and update your software and drivers on a periodical basis. Of course, generally, both Windows and Mac will warn you if any software or drivers are outdated. Don’t look down upon this tip. It will surely help a lot in reducing file fragmentation.

3. Uninstall All Useless Software

Moreover, too many useless programs or applications existing in your hard drive is one of the main causes of fragmentation as well. Therefore, it is advisable that when you think that any software is not needful any longer, you’d better uninstall them as soon as possible. This can free up majority of space in the drive, and thus prevent files from becoming fragmented.

4. Keep Files Equal to Block Size

Hard drive is divided into equally-sized units called clusters or blocks. The block size will influence the degree to which files will be fragmented. In other words, if a file size exceeds the block size, the file will be fragmented. If not exceed, it won’t become fragmented. Hence, you can attempt to keep files equal to the block size of your drive. Yet, as a matter of fact, it is difficult and impossible in most cases.

5. Defrag Hard Drive Regularly

Last but not least, it is believed that you must be familiar with defragmentation. It will re-arrange and collect all the file pieces and store them in a single location in hard drive. In a nutshell, it is especially designed for dealing with fragments. It can help your hard drive to manage data efficiently and free up more disk space. Hence, it is recommended to defrag your drive on a regular basis.

Author Introduction:

Shirley Zhang is a data recovery expert in DataNumen, Inc., which is the world leader in data recovery technologies, including corrupt mdf and outlook repair software products. For more information visit www.datanumen.com