What is defragmenting and why should I do it

Fragmentation is caused when an operating system breaks a file into pieces because there is not enough space on the storage device where the file was originally saved. One example of this would be where a file was originally saved, then modified causing the file to be larger in physical space than first anticipated, the operating system will then break the file into 2 or more pieces and store them in different parts of the storage area. The system would then keep a record of where the different parts of the file are stored, this is achieved through the use of a File Allocation Table (FAT) or similar file system such as NTFS . Then, when the operating system requires the file again, it will query the file system (FAT /NTFS /or other) to find out where the different parts of the file are located on the partition (drive). Defragmentation is the term given to the process of scanning the file system and rejoining the split files back into consecutive pieces. The process of defragmenting can be time consuming, but it is one of the easiest ways to increase the performance of your PC, the frequency of which a PC should be defragmented will directly depend on the amount of usage