Why is this so slow?

 

It's no secret that as computers get older, they tend to get slower. This can be because of a whole host of reasons, but one of the biggest reasons can be because of an old hard drive. Most lower end computers (and computers that come with 2 drives) have a spinning platter drive instead of a solid state drive. These drives are inherently slower than an SSD, but they can grow slower as they are used more.

To understand why, you need to have a basic understanding of how the spinning platter (hard disk) drives work. Information is stored on disks that spin around. On those disks, there are little segments where the information is stored. As you write files, the information fills the segments in a sequence, and as you delete files, the segments are emptied for reuse. 

As time goes on, and files are added and removed, chunks start to appear in the sequence. As files are added to the sequence they can be divided up if there is not a single segment long enough for the file. This creates something called fragmenting. A drive can quickly become fragmented if you move large amounts of data on and off of a drive.

To fix the issue of fragmenting, Windows has a tool called "Defragment and Optimize Drives." If you search the name of the tool in the windows search bar, it will come up. All you need to do is click "optimize" and the program will automatically scan and begin optimizing for you. Please note: if you have an SSD in your computer DO NOT ATTEMPT TO DEFRAGMENT. Defragmenting will cause the device to break. Also note that the process can take a couple days depending on the age of the drive and how fragmented it is.

If you suspect that your computer may be running slow because the drive is fragmented, feel free to contact DormNet to have us take a look!