Think of your hard drive as a storage bin and think of your files as all of the stuff that you want to store in that bin, when you create a file or copy one over etc the file is written to your hard drive. Now there isn't always enough space to write the file completely in one area of the drive so the file is split up into chunks of data that make up the file. Let's use a Microsoft Word document for example: some of the data that makes up your word document is stored one location and another chunk of data that makes up your word document is stored in another area around the platter(s) of your hard drive. As you continue to add stuff to your storage bin (files to you hard drive) the computer just sticks the chunks of data from each file wherever they'll fit. So now your word document isn't actually in one peace but in several chunks of data spread through out your hard drive. This is known as fragmentation. So now suppose you want to open up that word document when you do the computer has to search your hard drive for all of the chunks of data that make up your word file. Not only does this take time but it causes the read/ write heads to your hard drive to do a lot more work then they have to. To defragment your hard drive is to put all of these chunks of data that make up your word document to example in one location on the pladder of the hard drive so that when you go to open it the computer doesnÂ’t have to search all over the hard drive for the chunks that make up your word document. A disk defragmenter defragments your hard drive.
I would defragment once a month, you might even see a small speed increase if you do although it wonÂ’t be anything major.
-GrayWolf