A question that we are asked from time to time is: “We used to have to defrag our computer’s hard drive. Do I still need to do that?”

The short answer is “No!” A slightly longer answer is “No, especially if your computer has a SSD (Solid State Drive).”

If you aren’t aware, hard drives – primarily the traditional drives with a motor (HDDs), become fragmented as data is added and deleted. Over time, this can cause your computer to slow down. In the “old” days of computers, you needed to manually defrag a drive or install software to do so automatically. However, in more recent versions of the Windows OS, automatic defrag is built-in. On a Mac, defragging is not built-in and rarely required (If it is needed, you’ll have to use third-party software.) as the Mac OS writes data to the drive differently than a Windows machine. On either OS (Operating System), your intervention is not really needed nor is extra software.

Defragging an SSD is another issue. In truth, defragging this kind of drive isn’t really necessary and may actually shorten the life of the drive. How long a SSD will last is dependent on how many times you store data to the drive. Reading the drive has no effect on the life of the drive. Since defragging deletes and writes data throughout its process, defragging an SSD can cause the drive to “crash” sooner rather than later. (Remember, ALL hard drives crash.)

If your Windows computer has a SSD, you should turn off automatic defragging. (How can you tell if your PC has a SSD? Keep reading!) Here’s how to do that:

1. On your keyboard, hold down the Windows Key and tap the letter R.
2. In the Run window which appears, type “dfrgui” without the quotes.
3. Click OK.
4. On the Optimize Drives window, all your lettered hard drives will be listed. Under Media Type, look for “Solid state drive.”
5. If all the drives are listed as “Hard disk drive,” make no changes and close the Optimize Drives window. You’re good to go. (Skip steps 6-10.)
6. If any of the drives are listed as “Solid state drive,” make note of the drive letter. Then, under “Scheduled optimization,” click the “Change settings” button.
7. Keep the “Run on a schedule” checked and keep the setting at “Weekly.”
8. Click “Choose” under the Drives section.
9. In the new window, remove the checkmark from any of the drive letters which you noted earlier as solid state drives.
10. Click “Ok.” Then, “OK” again. And finally, “Close.”

That’s it, your done!