If you're running 10, stuff like defrag & error checking *may* not work as fast if performed in win7 on the win10 disk/partition, so try to use 10 with win10 disks/partitions if possible. If you're after saving space, moving all the files towards the start of the disk, you'll do better defragging the system disk/partition while running another copy of Windows or *nix - files that Windows is using cannot be moved. For example, after upgrading builds in a win10 VM the dynamic VHD will be from 25-30GB - after a defrag + compact it'll be ~11GB, & compacting without defragging 1st makes almost no difference, because there are files close to the far end of the disk. Windows 10 on Windows Central – All you need to knowįWIW, the actual process of writing to electro-mechanical hard drives in Windows hasn't changed much for decades, so yeah, if you needed to defrag in win98, you need to defrag in 10, unless of course you've got an SSD - in fact, you have more need than before if you upgrade builds in 10, which because of the way it saves your old version of Windows + software, leaves files *way out there* so-to-speak if you remove those old & installation files.More on Windows 10įor more help articles, coverage, and answers on Windows 10, you can visit the following resources:

However, you'll still see 'Solid state drive' listed under the Optimize Drives tool, because Windows can also perform different maintenance tasks to optimize your SSD, including the ability to inform the drive that certain blocks of data are no longer in use and can be erased making them writable again.Īlthough Windows 10 can detect and configure the appropriate optimization options for storage devices, if you have a traditional hard drive or an external drive that it's now always connected to your system, you should run maintenance on them manually. They only use banks of memory to store data, which means that these drives don't need to be defragmented (you shouldn't defragment SSDs, as it may cause performance issues and even reduce the life of the drive). They don't have any motors or moving parts. Remember that these optimization options only apply to traditional rotating platters hard drives.

Defragment and optimize drives