Defragmentation of external hard drive

An external hard drive is a convenient portable storage device that can be attached to a computer or laptop through a USB connection. External hard drives have high storage capacity and are often used to backup computers.

They store your valuable data and add an extensive level of safety and security. External hard drives are situated outside the computer allowing you to keep a backup of all vital files. Sensitive data can be saved on an external drive and stored in a secure location. Different external hard drive brands provide different storage capacities.

What is the Defragmentation of a Hard Drive?

Sometimes when you connect your external hard drive to your system and try accessing a file, it might take a long time to open it. This can happen when data on the external hard drive gets fragmented.

Fragmentation occurs over time as you save, delete or change files on the external hard disk. The files are saved on segments in a non-contiguous manner on the external hard disk. Changes made further are saved to other segments on the external hard drive.

As time goes by, accessing files from an external disk becomes a time-consuming process as it has to look at many different places to open a file.

Thus, it becomes necessary to defrag the external hard drive. Defragging should also be done when the data transfer rate is very slow. Defragmenting a hard disk is a key factor in the performance of a PC. In brief, defragmenting or defragging of the hard drive is the process of re-arranging files on a hard disk for faster access.

 

Why Should you Defrag External Hard Drive?

Defragging your hard drive can solve and prevent a number of problems your PC might get into in the future.

If you don't regularly defrag your external hard drive, your computer may run slowly and it may take a prolonged time to start or boot after you turn it on.

If a hard drive is highly fragmented, your computer may freeze up or it may not start at all. Hence, defragging becomes the most important thing to consider to keep in check your PC health.

But when it comes to Solid State Drives scenario becomes the opposite. Many users have been raising concerns about whether to Defrag SSD’s. Hence, here is the answer to the question.

Should I Defrag Solid State Drive?

Unlike traditional hard drives, the SSD’s have no movable parts, hence they’re termed “Solid State” and data stored on them is stored on an electronic chip that contains cells. Because of these cells, SSD’s can access data at a much higher speed using NAND gates which is approximately 300 times more than any traditional hard drive.

When you actually defrag SSD’s you are causing more harm than doing good to these drives. SSD’s store data on the cells and every time you delete/over-write data on cells in SSD’s you tend to wear the cells out.

Since every cell in SSD comes with an over-writing capacity of about 1000-3000 times after this the cells will wear out permanently, but defragmenting regularly will increase the over-writing cycles.

Therefore, defragging is not recommended because of the way SSD’s work, as data will be not be easily fragmented on solid-state drives as it has no movable parts wherein data might get fragmented, and running a defragmentation utility will actually burn through the program/erase cycles of SSD’s and make SSD’s susceptible to early damaged. Now, let’s get back to the method wherein you can Defrag the External Hard Drive effectively with the help of the tool.  Remo Drive Defrag is one such finest tool to perform defragmentation of the external hard drive.

Features of Remo Drive Defrag Tool

  • Defragmentation using the Remo Defrag tool increases the age of your hard drive as it reduces the workload for it.
  • The tool allows you to defrag files based on the file type and extension and it also provides an in-built scheduler to schedule the drive fragmentation.
  • The software provides a complete examination of the external hard drive before the defragmentation process. It even supports defragmentation on Microsoft Windows 8, Windows 7, Windows Vista, Windows XP, Windows 2003, and Windows 2008 server, etc.

What are the different modes in Remo Drive Defrag Tool?

Remo Drive Defrag tool provides two modes for defragmentation that are “Quick Defragmentation Mode” and “Deep Defragmentation Mode”.

To defrag files based on file types use Quick Defragmentation Mode and to defrag complete drives, that have not been defragmented for long, in which you cannot notice any difference in performance use Deep Defragmentation Mode.

When you choose the “Deep Defragmentation Option” the software tries to contiguously arrange the whole data to present on the drive.

After the completion of the defrag process, you can view the generated analysis report, which gives a complete idea about the decreased fragmentation level.

Now that you know about the different modes that you can use in the Remo Drive Defrag Tool, find the steps below to defrag external hard drive.

Steps to Defrag External Hard Drive

  • Download Remo Drive Defrag software on your computer and install it.
  • Connect the external hard drive to be defragmented to your system.
  • Once, you launch the software, select the external drive on which you want to perform defragmentation and hit on “Analyze” option as in.Figure 1
  • Once the analysis is complete hit on the next screen you can view the fragmented file report like. Figure 2
  • Click on the “Next” and then choose one from the two defragmented modes i.e. “Quick Defragmentation” or “ deep defragmentation” mode based on your requirement as shown in. Figure 3
  • Select “deep defragmentation” mode to defrag the external drive, this will arrange the files on the external hard disk in a continuous fashion.
  • Once you have selected the mode of defragmentation the software starts the defragging process as in. Figure 4
  • After completion click “Next” to view the analysis of the hard drive after the defragmentation process.
  • Press “Finish” to complete the defragmentation process

Important note

  • Do not use your system or any file from the external hard drive when the defragmentation is in process
  • Applications like antivirus and firewall should be closed for effective defragmentation

Why Choose Remo?

100% safeSecure

100% SatisfactionGuarantee

10 Million+Downloads

Free TechSupport

Live Chat24/7 Support

Top