Sometimes, a newspaper article skips from the front page to somewhere in the middle of the paper. You have to stop reading the article and flip through the paper to find the page on which it continues. You could read the article much faster if it were printed on a single page.

Files on your computer can either be fragmented, like newspaper articles, or unfragmented, like a book. Over time, more and more files become fragmented. When a file is fragmented, it takes longer for the computer to read it because it has to skip to different sections of the hard disk drive—just like it takes you a few seconds to find a page in the middle of a newspaper.

Defragmentation improves your computer's performance by reorganizing your files.
While fragmentation looks complicated, it's easy to defragment your computer.

To defragment your computer

1. Click Start, and then click My Computer.

   

2. Right-click Local Disk, and then click Properties.

   

3. Click the Tools tab, and then click Defragment Now.

   

4. The Disk Defragmenter appears. Click your hard disk drive, and then click Defragment.

   

   
   

5. Disk Defragmenter will work for at least several minutes, although it might take several hours. When prompted, click Close.

   

   If you have more than one hard disk drive, repeat this process for each hard disk drive listed, starting at step 4.

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