I’ve seen debates about whether or not it truly helps to defragment your hard drive. What is defragmenting? As files are saved, small pieces of them get stored all over the drive. Defragmenting the drive puts those pieces back in a contiguous order and that will hopefully make accessing the file faster in the future. Again, some say it isn’t needed any more while others say it still helps. I prefer to err on the side of defragmenting as it certainly won’t make it worse.

Windows includes a utility for defragmenting your drive. It works, but it has a limited feature set. Today I want to introduce you to Piriform Defraggler. It’s from the same company that produces the popular CCleaner utility. It has quite a feature list, though one of the most important ones is that you can automatically schedule a defrag. I schedule mine to take place around 2-3am when I know I won’t be using my computer. OK, I better not be using the computer in the middle of the night! By doing that, it won’t slow down the computer when you are using and hopefully the computer will be faster because the drive is defragmented.

There are three versions. The first is free but offers no support. Another is for home users and costs $25. Lastly there is the Business Edition which costs $35. Check it out and I think you’ll find it is a good addition to your computer toolbox.