Microsoft Power Defragmenter - fix your slow Windows machine

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One of the reasons why your Windows computer become slow over time is because the files on the hard drive can become fragmented. What is that?


As you start filling your hard-drive with new programs, documents, and other files, the operating system tries to find vacant places on the hard-drive to place these files. Like an artist who breaks a tile into multiple pieces to form a mosaic, your computer will break these file into fragments and store them in different places across your hard drive.

When you load a program or open a file, the computer will have to first assemble these “fragmented” pieces thus decreasing the performance. And fragmentation is not just an issue with your computer’s hard disk but even removable devices like the USB Flash Drive or your external drives can also become fragmented with time.

Windows Disk Defragmenter from Microsoft

A Disk Defragmenter pre-arranges all the “fragmented” pieces of a file close together thus reducing the time it takes to open files or load programs on your computer. Now, the problem with built-in windows solutions is that the app will ignore all files smaller than 64MB. But Microsoft offers another free, more powerful but lesser-known utility called Contig (short for contiguous) that lets you have more control over the defragmentation process. Contig lets you to defragment individual files, folders, or the entire hard drive. But Contig is command prompt based so you can look at Power Defragmenter – an easy and more visual interface for Contig.

Using Power Defragmenter, you can visually select files, folders, or the drive you wish to defragment, and Power Defragmenter will internally use Contig to perform the defragmentation process. You may use Contig (Power Defragmenter) on computers running Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7.

Download MS Power Defragmenter here, or if you are more tech user try the command prompt Contig here.

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