Many of users have been told to use a disk defragmenter when noticing a slow down on the computer. But, what is the exact use of disk defragment? Is it the helper or the snake oil? If you have no patience in getting the detail, you can scroll down to the end to get the answer.

In order to understand what disk defragmenter is, it is important to learn about “what is fragmentation, how it is created and how it works?”. When data, such as a music file, is stored on a hard disk the system seeks to store that file in one section of contiguous locations that are connecting without a break/space. As you use the PC, though, files are constantly being written, deleted and resized from the hard disk, and small pockets of space will be created and scattered on your hard drive, which is called fragmentation.

The fragmentation happens a lot when installing new software on your computer because the program might now be installed over multiple locations on your hard drive. Now when you run this particular program, its performance and speed will be degraded because it has to be loaded from spread-out multiple locations on the hard drive, due to the constant growth of fragment.

That’s why you need a disk defragmenter to speed up your hard drive working. A disk defragmenter reorganizes the data on your hard drive's partitions in such a manner that the files are stored in as much adjacent space as possible. This makes the programs and data to run more efficiently and faster as the operating system does not have to read from multiple locations.

Windows 7 or later version gets built-in Disk Defragmenter, but the procedure could take a whole day long. Then you should use the alternative yet more powerful disk defragmenter of Neptune SystemCare Ultimate. The Disk Defrag function on this system optimization utility ensures faster, larger, cleaner contiguous writes from Windows without creating an issue of memory starvation or resource contention.

While you are at it, you can check out the other maintenance you need to do to your Windows PC, like registry error cleaning, unnecessary startup items removal, and network optimization.

To sum up, you’ll need a disk defragmenter to erase the fragments that slow down your PC.