What is Drive Optimization?
There is a built-in utility in Windows 10 to optimize drives, which can be used to defragment disks, so it is also called Disk Defragmentation.
We use computers to install software, copy or paste files, add, move or save files, all of which use hard drive space. On a hard drive, file and folder segments are often stored separately. For example, deleting a file in a certain volume causes the area to be temporarily idle, and the newly created file will skip this area and store it in another location. Windows needs to spend more time collecting the individual fragments.
Using the Drive Optimization tool, you can centrally organize fragment files and folders that are scattered on the drive. Windows system will access files and folders more efficiently. At the same time, the Drive Optimization tool can centrally merge the available space, so that the newly created files can be centrally stored without causing fragmentation.
Optimize SSDs or HDDs in Windows 10
Step 1: Type Defragment and Optimize drives in the search box and hit the Enter key to open Optimize Drives window.
Step 2: The appearing window lists all drives installed on and connected to your PC, including your removable USB drives. If you have HDDs installed on your PC, you will see how much of the drive is fragmented in the Current status column. For SSDs, the Current status column will display if the drive requires optimization or the last optimized date if it’s recently optimized.
Step 3: To optimize a drive, select it from the list and then click the Optimize button. If you have signed in with a non-admin account, you might need to enter the admin account password to optimize drives.
For HDDs, you can click on the Analyze button to check what percent of the drive is fragmented. After that, click on the Optimize button to defrag the drive. It might take minutes to hours to complete the defrag operation depending on how much the drive is fragmented.
Schedule Drive Optimization in Windows 10
In windows, Optimize Drive tool automatically runs once a week to optimize drives. However, you can change the frequency to Daily or Monthly, and even stop the tool from automatically optimizing some drives or all drives.
We suggest you choose the Monthly option if the PC is not your daily driver. We don’t recommend the Daily optimization as it won’t be much helpful. To change the default optimization schedule:
Step 1: Open Optimize Drives window, and click the Change settings button. This will open a small dialog.
Step 2: Make sure the Run on a schedule option is selected and then select either Daily, Weekly, or Monthly from the Frequency drop-down box.
Step 3: By default settings, all drives installed on your PC are selected for optimization. If you want to spare a drive, click the Choose button next to the Drives option, and then uncheck drives that you don’t want to optimize automatically.
Conclusion
That’s how to optimize HDD or SSD in Windows 10. If your computer is slowing down a lot, try our recommended drive optimization method.