Optimize and defragment disks with Norton Utilities Ultimate

Your computer's hard disk stores all your files, applications, and the Windows operating system. Over time, the bits of information that make up your files gradually spread over the disk. This process is known as fragmentation. The more you use your computer, the more fragmented your disks become.

The operating system tries to store file data in contiguous sectors on the disk so that the drive heads can move sequentially, reading each sector in turn. When a file is deleted, the operating system tries to reclaim that deleted space. If a new file being written is bigger than the contiguous space available, the operating system will have to fragment the file. Reading and writing now involves the drive heads having to move across the disk to find all the fragments of the file, thus, slowing down the process. Over time, more files are added and deleted, which increases this fragmentation and lowers the performance of the computer. Defragmentation is the rearranging of these sectors so that file data is stored contiguously.