I have a laptop with SSD C: drive and 750GB HDD D: drive. I recently found that on the D: drive and also an external HDD (F: ) I have, there was less free space than there should be. If I added up the amount of GB my files were using, it came to less than what my computer says the D: and F: drives are each using. I think in the end what's using up my space on D: is system restore points, which I'm going to turn off, but why the F: drive has less space than it should is still a mystery.
One of the things I tried to free up space was using the disk defragmenter. Don't worry, I didn't use it on my SSD! When I tried it on D: I ended up stopping the process half-way through because it was late in the evening and it was taking a long time. This seemed to reduce the free space by a few GB! But when I then went and did the defrag process again and let it go all the way through, it ended up with more free space than I'd started with. Good.
However, when I tried disk defrag on the external HDD, at the end of the process it had lost free space! About 50GB! What happened there? I'm I not supposed to use disk defrag on external HDDs?
So what is disk defragmentation meant to do? Is it meant to increase or decrease the amount of free space you have on a drive?
One of the things I tried to free up space was using the disk defragmenter. Don't worry, I didn't use it on my SSD! When I tried it on D: I ended up stopping the process half-way through because it was late in the evening and it was taking a long time. This seemed to reduce the free space by a few GB! But when I then went and did the defrag process again and let it go all the way through, it ended up with more free space than I'd started with. Good.
However, when I tried disk defrag on the external HDD, at the end of the process it had lost free space! About 50GB! What happened there? I'm I not supposed to use disk defrag on external HDDs?
So what is disk defragmentation meant to do? Is it meant to increase or decrease the amount of free space you have on a drive?
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