How to defrag in Windows 7: speed up startup times and free up disk space

Evan Gower May 14, 2014

There are many good reasons to defrag your hard disk in Windows 7, and the same goes for Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 8. In this guide, we explain how to defrag in Windows 7, why you may want to, and how to set up a regular defrag routine.

How to defrag in Windows 7: speed up startup times and free up disk space

How to defrag in Windows 7 step 1: preparation

It’s always good to know whether or not the defragging process made any difference, so the first step is to set your baseline. Make a note of how much hard disk space you have, run a quick benchmark to see how well your hard disk is performing – a tool such as HD Tune works well – and make a note of the results.

The theory behind defragging your hard disk is that it should make some difference to load times for files. By default, Windows will save files in fragments across the disk, and each time you load a file it dynamically rebuilds them. A defrag tool will rearrange the data to make it quicker, again we’ll emphasise theoretically, because your file is in one place.

One other note: if your laptop or PC is using an SSD (solid-state disk) then there’s no need to defrag it.

How to defrag in Windows 7 - step 1 4x3

We’ve seen the biggest post-defrag improvements to boot-up times, so you might want to measure this. We’ve used several tools over the years, including Boot Racer, but in reality a stopwatch timer (and ensuring your PC is set to boot straight to the desktop) works perfectly well for our needs. Just time from pressing the on button to your Windows 7 desktop appearing.

How to defrag in Windows 7 step 2: run Disk Defragmenter

The good news is you don’t need to download a third-party defrag tool: Microsoft includes the perfectly respectable Disk Defragmenter in Windows 7. Type “Disk defragmenter” into the search box and click on Disk Defragmenter, which will appear automatically unless you make a typo.

How to defrag in Windows 7 step 3: select and analyse your disk

You’ll see a window containing a number of disks, something like this. Note that although scheduled disk defragmentation is typically turned on by default, it may be set to a time such as 1am every Monday – great if you leave your PC switched on at that time, not so great otherwise.

Click on the “Analyse Disk” button. This process shouldn’t take long, and you can stop at any point. You’ll soon be told just how fragmented your disk is. In our case, it’s only 4% fragmented. Microsoft suggests defragging if that figure hits 10% or over, but we’ll press ahead anyway.

How to defrag in Windows 7 step 4: defrag your disk

This process will take considerably longer, perhaps hours. The good news is that you can still keep on using your computer whilst defragging takes place, so don’t worry on that front.

How to defrag in Windows 7 step 5: test for improvement

So the minutes and hours have passed, and Disk Defragmenter assures you that all is well: your disk is 0% fragmented. Has the defragging made any difference? We doubt that you’ll notice much in practice, which is where those records from step 1 come into play.
Check your hard disk space: is there any difference? Does your PC boot more quickly? Has there been any increase in your benchmark of choice?

Even if the answer to all of those questions is no, you haven’t wasted your time. It’s good practice to defrag your hard disk every now and then, even if it simply forces you into a bit of housekeeping – deleting big files you don’t use, for instance.

And now would be a perfect time to press on “Configure schedule” so that you know Disk Defragmenter will run, all by itself, at a time of your choosing. We recommend every month during a time when your PC will actually be switched on.