If files on your system’s disk are fragmented, you should run Windows; a built-in defragmenting tool to help organize and consolidate the systems’ files. This should be done regularly to help speed up accessing files and data that are needed to operate Windows 11. Defragmenting your system drive may take a while especially if the drive is large and has lots of data on it. You should schedule a time, preferably overnight when no one is using the computer. The best way to handle this is to schedule a daily or weekly run instead of manually running it when needed. Defragmenting the system’s drive is a legacy feature that’s also available in Windows 11. This feature has been part of Windows since XP and is now in Windows 11 as well. To get started defragmenting Windows 11 systems drive, follow the steps below:
How to defrag Windows 11 system drive
As mentioned above, defragmenting is the processing of organizing and consolidating files and data on the system’s drive to improve performance. Fragmented or scattered data creates an access problem since it provides an inefficient way to access the data across the disk. To optimize your system’s disk, use the guide below: Windows 11 has a centralized location for the majority of its settings. From system configurations to creating new users and updating Windows, all can be done from the System Settings pane. To get to System Settings, you can use the Windows key + I shortcut or click on Start ==> Settings as shown in the image below: Alternatively, you can use the search box on the taskbar and search for Settings. Then select to open it. Windows Settings pane should look similar to the image below. In Windows Settings, click System, and select Storage on the right pane of your screen shown in the image below. On the Storage settings pane, click Advanced storage settings. On the Advanced storage settings expanded pane, select Drive optimization as highlighted below. On the Optimize Drives settings pane, you’ll see details of the status, including the last analysis, schedules, and other optimization details. Since we want to schedule Windows 11 to run the defragmentation tool at a specific time, make sure that Schedule optimization is turned Off. If it’s on, click the Change settings button and disable the scheduled optimization.
How to schedule disk to defragment in Windows 11
Windows will schedule disk to defragment daily or weekly, but not at a specific time. If you want Windows to handle the scheduling then turn on the default weekly schedule and forget it. For those who want to schedule a run at a specific time, they can turn off the schedule above and run a Task scheduler instead. Search for Task Scheduler and select the app as highlighted below. When the Task Scheduler app opens, open the Task Scheduler Library ==> Microsoft ==> Windows ==> Defrag. Then select double-click the selected defrag schedule or click Properties on the right. When the Properties opens, click the Triggers tab and click New. Then select the options and settings that are best for you. You can choose the time, how often it should run and for how long. When you’re done, click OK and enable the schedule. Finally, right-click on the scheduled task and enable it. That should do it! Conclusion: This post showed you how to defragment Windows 11 system disk. If you find any error above, please use the comment form below to report.
