This Itechguide teaches you how to defrag Windows 10. The guide covers steps for 3 methods to defrag Windows 10 – Defragment Tool, Command Prompt, PowerShell.
Option 1: Defrag with Defragment Tool
The Defragment Tool allows you to perform one-time, manual defragmentation or scheduled, automatic defragmentation.
Method 1: Manual Defragmentation
- Type defrag in the search box. Then select Defragment and Optimise Drives.
- When the Optimise Drives tool opens, select the drive you want to defrag. Then, on the bottom right of the tool, click Optimise.
Method 2: Scheduled Automatic Defragmentation
- You can also schedule your computer to defragment automatically. To manage the settings, beneath Scheduled optimization, click Change settings.
- To turn off scheduled automatic defragmentation, uncheck the checkbox beside Run on a schedule (recommended).
- Alternatively, leave the box checked and select how often (Frequency) you want the defragmentation to run.
- Then, beside Drives, click Choose and select or deselect the drives you want to add to or remove from the automatic defragmentation schedule.
- When you finish click OK.
- Finally, on the Optimisation schedule screen, click OK.
Option 2: Defrag with Command Prompt
- Search command prompt and click Run as administrator.
- If you receive the User Account Control tool prompting you to allow the app to make changes to your computer, click Yes.
- On the Command Prompt, type the command below and press enter
defrag /C /H /V /O
- Wait for the operation to complete. If everything goes well, you should receive “The operation completed successfully”. You should also receive a “Post Defragmentation Report”
- To learn more about the defrag switches used in the previous command and other available switches, type the command below and press enter.
defrag /? | more
- Piping “defrag /?” to “more”, forces command prompt to display the results one page per time. To display more pages, press the enter key.
Option 3: Defrag with PowerShell
- Type PowerShell in the search box and click Run as Administrator.
- If you receive the User Account Control tool prompting you to allow the app to make changes to your computer, click Yes.
- Then on the PowerShell command, type the command below and press enter:
Optimize-Volume -DriveLetter <drive_letter> -Verbose
Optimize-Volume -DriveLetter C -Verbose
- When you press enter, the command will start running. Verbose switch forces PowerShell to display the progress of the command. The second image below shows the final result.
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