Defrag for Newbies

Start -> All Programs -> Accessories -> System Tools -> Disk Defragmenter

Something everyone should know that most do not. If you have a laptop, more than likely you have a SSD (Solid State Drive), you do not and should not ever defrag these types of drives. It would be like defragmenting a USB Jump Drive.

Solid State Drives can access any location on the drive in the same time. This is one of the main advantages over hard drives. This also means that there is no need to defragment a Solid State Drive ever. These drives have actually been designed to write data evenly in all sectors of the drive which the industry is calling wear leveling. Each sector of a Solid State Drive has a limited number of writes before it cannot be overwritten anymore. (this is a theoretical limit which cannot be reached in work environments)

If you did defragment your Solid State Disk you can rest assured that you did not harm it in any way. It is just that this process is not needed and that defragmentation causes lots of write processes which means that the drive will reach its write limits sooner.

A feature in Windows 7 will NOT allow you to defrag a Solid State Drive. If you do not see your drive do not panic. If you have a recovery drive that is defragmentable, do not defrag it.