If access to the hard disk slows down, this could be due to frag­men­ta­tion. This is a common cause, at least with older storage media, which is why Windows includes its own program for de­frag­ment­ing hard disks. External tools, that once were very popular, are no longer necessary for Windows 10 users. The included de­frag­men­ta­tion tool is easy to find and access via the context menus in File Explorer. Here, we’ll show you how to de­frag­ment your disks in Windows 10.

De­frag­ment­ing – here’s how it’s done

In most cases the feature to au­to­mat­i­cal­ly de­frag­ment in Windows 10 is suf­fi­cient. However, if you want to manually de­frag­ment your hard disk, you can follow these steps:

Step 1: Right-click the drive you want to de­frag­ment in Explorer and select “Prop­er­ties” from the context menu.

Image: Windows 10: context menu in Explorer
De­frag­ment­ing your hard disk starts with the “Prop­er­ties” tab in the context menu of your selected drive.

Step 2: Next, click on “Optimize” within the “Tools” tab of your disk.

Image: Windows 10: “Properties” of the hard disk
Via “Prop­er­ties” in a drive you can find the option to de­frag­ment.

Step 3: Select the desired drive and start the de­frag­men­ta­tion process by clicking on “Optimize”. Hard disks with a frag­men­ta­tion of 10 percent or less don’t have to be de­frag­ment­ed.

Image: “Optimize drives” in Windows 10
“Optimize drives” in Windows 10

You can also launch de­frag­men­ta­tion in Windows 10 by opening the Start menu and selecting “De­frag­ment and optimize drives” from “Windows man­age­ment programs”.

Tip

For more tips on how to speed up Windows 10, read our article “Speed up Windows 10: 8 tips for better per­for­mance”.

Automatic de­frag­men­ta­tion

Windows schedules automatic de­frag­men­ta­tion of all hard disks by default. Hard disks with automatic op­ti­miza­tion are almost always displayed with a frag­men­ta­tion of 0 percent.

  1. To see and adjust the automatic op­ti­miza­tion settings, click the “Change Settings” button in the “Optimize Drives” dialog box of the de­frag­men­ta­tion program.
     
  2. In the “Frequency” section of the next window, set the frequency of op­ti­miza­tion. “Monthly” is quite suf­fi­cient even for heavy users.
Image: “Optimize Drives” window in Windows 10
Settings to au­to­mat­i­cal­ly optimize hard disks.
  1. When clicking on “Choose” you can select a drive that should be selected for automatic op­ti­miza­tion. Activate this feature only for HDD storage and not for SSD.
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