How to optimize and defrag drives in Windows 10: Improving the performance of your PC is very important for proper operation and to help with this, Windows 10 performs disk defragmentation once a week for hard drives. Now, by default, disk defragmentation runs automatically on a weekly schedule at a particular time that is set in automatic maintenance. But this doesn’t mean you can’t manually optimize or defrag your drives on your PC.
Now disk defragmentation reorganizes all the data that is spread across the hard drive and stores it again. When the files are written to the disk, it is divided into multiple parts as there is not enough contiguous space to store the entire file, thus the files become fragmented. Naturally, reading all this data from different places will take some time, in short, it will lead to slow PC, long boot times, random crashes and crashes, etc.
Defragmentation reduces file fragmentation, which improves the speed of reading and writing data to disk, ultimately increasing your PC’s performance. Disk defragmentation also cleans the disk, which increases the overall storage capacity. So, without wasting any time, let’s see How to Optimize and Defrag Drives in Windows 10 with the help of the tutorial given below.
How to Optimize and Defrag Drives in Windows 10
Make sure to create a restore point in case something goes wrong.
Method 1: Optimize and defragment drives in drive properties
1.Press Windows Key + E to open File Explorer or double-click This PC.
two. Right-click on any partition on the hard drive for the one you want run defrag and select Properties.
3. Switch to the Tool tab and then click » Optimize » under Optimize and defragment your drive.
Four. select unit for which you want to run the defragmentation and then click the Analyze button to see if it needs to be optimized.
Note: If the drive has more than 10% fragmentation then it should be optimized.
5.Now to optimize the drive, click on the Optimize button . Defragmentation may take some time depending on the size of your drive, but you can still use your PC.
6. Close everything and then restart your PC.
This is the how to optimize and defragment drives in Windows 10, but if you are still stuck then skip this method and follow the next one.
Method 2: How to Optimize and Defrag Drives in Windows 10 Using Command Prompt
1.Press Windows Key + X then select Command Prompt (Admin).
2. Type the following command in cmd and press Enter:
defrag drive_letter: /O
Note: Replace drive_letter with the actual drive letter of the drive for which you want to run disk defragmentation. For example, to optimize drive C: the command would be: defrag C: /O
3.Now to optimize and defrag all your drives at once use the following command:
defrag /C/O
4. The defrag command supports the following command line arguments and options.
Syntax:
defrag
Where
Or to trace an operation already in progress on a volume: defrag
Parameters:
| Worth | Description |
| /A | Perform scans on the specified volumes. |
| /YES | Perform boot optimization to defragment the boot sector of the boot volume. This will not work on a SSD . |
| /c | Perform the operation on all volumes. |
| /RE | Perform traditional defragmentation (this is the default). |
| /ME | Perform the operation on all volumes except those specified. |
| / H | Run the operation with normal priority (default is low). |
| / I n | Tier optimization would run for at most n seconds on each volume. |
| /k | Carry out the consolidation of slabs in the specified volumes. |
| /L | Perform retrim on the specified volumes. just for a SSD . |
| /M [n] | Run the operation on each volume in parallel in the background. At most n threads optimize storage levels in parallel. |
| / EITHER | Perform the appropriate optimization for each media type. |
| /T | Traces an operation that is already in progress on the specified volume. |
| / OR | Print the progress of the operation on the screen. |
| /v | Prints detailed results containing fragmentation statistics. |
| /X | Perform free space consolidation on the specified volumes. |
This is the way to optimize and defrag drives in Windows 10 using command prompt, but you can also use PowerShell instead of CMD, just follow the next method to see how to optimize and defrag drives using PowerShell.
Method 3 – Optimize and Defrag Drives in Windows 10 with PowerShell
1.Type power shell in Windows Search, then right-click PowerShell in the search results and select Execute as an administrator.
2. Now type the following command in PowerShell and hit Enter:
Optimize-Volume -DriveLetter drive_letter -Verbose
Note: Replace drive_letter with the actual drive letter of the drive for which you want to run disk defragmentation .
For example, to optimize drive F: the command would be: defrag Optimize-Volume -DriveLetter F -Verbose
3. If you want to scan the drive first, use the following command:
Optimize-Volume -DriveLetter drive_letter -Analyze -Verbose
Note: Replace drive_letter with the actual drive letter, for example: Optimize-Volume -DriveLetter F -Analyze -Verbose
4.This command should only be used on an SSD, so only proceed if you are sure you are running this command on an SSD:
Optimize-Volume -DriveLetter drive_letter -ReTrim -Verbose
Note: Replace drive_letter with the actual drive letter, for example: Optimize-Volume -DriveLetter D -ReTrim -Verbose
5. Restart your PC to save the changes.
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That’s all you’ve successfully learned How to defer feature and quality updates in Windows 10, but if you still have any questions about this tutorial, feel free to ask in the comments section.