Network policy may prevent you from running Disk Defragmenter. Check to see if the computer is on a network.Log on as Administrator or as a member of the Administrators group to run Disk Defragmenter.

Disconnect from the Internet and then turn off anti-virus and anti-spyware programs.Exit other programs before beginning disk defragmentation, including programs running in the background.If you encounter problems running Disk Defragmenter, try the following: When the Disk Defragmenter window appears after the defragment process is complete, click Close.Depending on the size of the drive, it may take several minutes for the defragmentation process to complete. Do not open any other programs at this time. From the Disk Defragmenter window, click to highlight the drive to be defragmented.Click the Start button, point to All Programs, point to Accessories, point to System Tools, and then click to select Disk Defragmenter to display the Disk Defragmenter window.After the defragmentation is complete, click Close.(To change the defragmentation schedule, click the Modify schedule button, select the desired schedule options, and click OK.). In the Disk Defragmenter window, select or deselect Run on a schedule. Depending on your usage habits, schedule Disk Defragmenter to run weekly or monthly.In the User Account Control window, click Continue.

Click Start, click All Programs, point to Accessories, point to System Tools, and then click Disk Defragmenter.

(On filesystems > 1TB leaving 100 GB is enough. My rule of thumb: Leave at least 10% free if possible. Nearly full filesystems, especially if they are the C: drive, fragment quicker and with a lot more performance impact. 3rd party tools might just make matters worse, because they can attempt to optimize files in ways that go contrary to what Windows wants to do.Īdditional remark: Don't stuff a relatively small filesystem too full. The Microsoft tools are aware of that and take it into account. Windows 10 does all sort of funky things with temp-files, disk-caching and hybrid hibernation. I would strongly recommend to do any defrag from within Windows using the Microsoft tools. A SSD mostly doesn't care about fragmentation anyway and doing one can be really bad for the life-expectancy of the SSD.) Some fragmentation is to be expected, but if it gets above 15% to 20% it is usually time for a defrag. Maybe they need to justify their own existence. Different tools given different analysis results is normal.Įspecially 3rd party (non-Microsoft) tools always seem to give a worse defrag report than the Microsoft tools.

Defrag hdd windows 10