Although the 'Defragmentation Tool' in Windows 7 is not so much different than the Vista defrag, there are, however, some differences between the two  Windows  disk tools. This is a tutorial about how to defrag your hard drives using the Windows 7 Disk Defragmenter.

Both local disks and external disks (USB flash drives or portable hard disks) can become fragmented, thus slowing down your computer. It's recommended that you defragment your disks at least once a month or even more often if you install and uninstall lots of applications. In order to do that, you can either defragment manually your disk or schedule disk defragmentation using the scheduler. You can improve performance by defragmenting your hard disk, increase its operating speed and your work efficiency.


Disk defragmentation requires minimal input on your side: once you've decided which disk drives to defragment and a schedule for the defragmentation process, you can let the defrag tool do the job. Usually, I schedule the disk defragmentation process to run during the night. I just leave the computer running and it will do the job.

So, let's get down to business. Once you've opened the Windows 7 Disk Defragmenter, (see image below: click 'Start', type in defragment, click on 'Disk Defragmenter') you need to check your disks first in order to see whether they need defragmentation or not.

In order to determine the fragmentation state, you select one or more disks and analyze them (click the 'Analyze Disk' button).

When the disk analysis is complete, Disk defragmenter will display the disk fragmentation percentage for each disk (see the 'Last Run' column of the Disk Defragmenter window ). If any of your disks are fragmented more than 10% it's recommended that you start the defragmentation process.

In order to defragment your hard disks, simply select the drives and push the 'Defragment Disk' button. The process may take a long time, depending on how large and fragmented your drives are.

In order to save you some time, you can schedule the defragmentation process using the scheduler. Click on the 'Configure schedule' button to start the disk defrag daily, weekly or monthly, on a week day and time of your choice.

Of course, you need to select also the disk drives you wish to defragment, and that's all.

You can use your computer while defragmenting your drives, but it will slow down the defragmentation process, so it's best if you defragment your drives when the system is in idle time. In case you are not satisfied with the windows deffraggler, you can have a look at more advanced disk defragmentation software.