What is Disk Fragmentation on Windows and how does it optimize your hard disk?
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What you mean is DEfragmentation.
The disk in this case is the “hard disk” aka the hard drive where you save everything.
So when you save something, imagine the disk as a container that has a bunch of squares where you can shove things. Let’s say it has 100 squares and that you save something worth 30 squares, they will all be saved in sequence as a singular chunk or block. Then you save something that is 5 squares then 20 squares. So you are at 45 squares left. You then uninstall the thing worth 5 squares and then this is where it gets weird.
A computer rarely ever really “deletes” anything. Instead it just marks that section as “ok to rewrite” , this is how you can still recover things off a hard drive even after you’ve “deleted” everything.
So that 5 memory block is there, waiting to be rewritten but still taking up space. Now you try to install something worth 50 blocks. Computers work much better if all memory is sequential instead of having to dig through the whole disk. However in order to shove the 50 blocks of data in, it needs to write 5 in that spot that is ok to be rewritten and then go over to the free 45 spaces to write the rest, so the disk now has some “fragmentation”
As you use the computer and continue on writing and rewriting to the disk, more info gets separated, and programs that use that info will have to scour the entire box to get what it needs. Part 1 is in the top left corner in block 1, part 3 is on block 49, etc etc.
So defragmenting is like resorting that box so all like information is with like. It is like when you organize your inventory in resident evil 4 to have the guns all in one space, the ammo in another and the healing in another spot so when you open up the inventory you can quickly find it.
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