Why do computers start to slow down over time?
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Whether launching a program or reading a file, the computer must get that data from the HDD or SDD, and that data comes in (typically) 512-byte chunks, the size of an HDD sector. The OS keeps track of all the sectors for every file. Over time – as you create new files and delete old files – the disk becomes fragmented, meaning that the sectors for a given program or file can be scattered all over the disk. Because the HDD takes time to move the read head into position to read the next sector, as the disk becomes more fragmented, the load times get longer.
There are utilities that can “defrag” an HDD and doing so can dramatically improve the response time of your computer because it moves all sectors for a file together so they can be read faster. The OS will boot much faster since that is a huge chunk of data.
Source: been doing computers for over 50 years since before PCs.
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