While saving files in the hard drive of
Mac, Data is mostly stored at contigous memory locations i.e. Single
file is stored at multiple locations. When we try to save files in
the Mac HDD then file is broken into parts and these parts of file
are saved at different locations.This process is known as
Fragmentation. Free and empty spaces are created between the used
space in the hard drive and this decrease the Mac performance.
Deletion of files can also creates free spaces in between the used
space. So to make this free space useful and to make Mac work faster
we should do Defragmentation.
Defragmentation
is the process of collecting all the used space and free space of
hard drive together. The process of defragmentation decreases the
fragmentation of drive & improves the hard drive performance.
Effects of
Fragmentation:
Due to fragmentation of
the drive, the processing speed of your system becomes slow. Like if
you are searching for a file in fragmented hard drive then hard drive
read eye have to move to multiple positions to search for different
parts of file. So this will take longer processing than usual.
Similarly if you are
writing a file to hard drive then it will take much longer time due
to storing of file at multiple locations. So disk fragmentation will
degrade the system performance and is unhealthy for the drive in the
long run.
How
to defrage hard drive?
For
effective defragmentation of hard drive you need to get a good defrag
tool. I personally recommend a very good defrag tool i.e.
Stellar Drive Defrag.
This software works very effectively and efficiently. You can buy
this software from stellarinfo.com. Stellar Drive Defrag has a very
rich GUI which makes it easy to use. It also supports various hard
drive models.
Features of this software are:
- Free space optimization
- Full defragmentation
- File defragmentation
- Defragmentation of metadata files
After
defragmentation is over all the files will be stored in the contigous
memory locations. Defragmentation will boost your Mac performance and
it will increase the processing speed of Mac.
But you need to know
these things before defragmenting Hard drive:
- If you do defragmentation of your hard drive very frequently then it can shorten the life of your hard drive.
- Their is a possibility that files can damaged during defragmentation although it happens very rarely. Prepare a backup plan before going for hard drive defragmentation.