O&O Defrag is a free software that is used for defragmenting hard disk so that your PC can perform a bit faster and programs will open quickly. O&O Defrag provides two methods for defragmenting hard disk; quick and thorough defragmentation. It will quickly analyze the hard disk and automatically perform the defragmentation process. It also gives facility to automatically schedule defragmentation process. Moreover, it provides a ClusterView in which you can view your hard disk as blocks (see the below screenshot), can view status of hard disk, and can defragment your fragmented hard disk.
Fragmentation of hard disk occurs because of its frequent use and with the creation, deletion, and modification of files. In that case, file system won’t be able to provide contiguous space to store a single file as a single unit and results in performance loss of PC. But with defragmentation process, you can easily reduce fragmentation amount and can create large sections to store big file as a single unit. O&O Defrag does the same defragmentation process for you. Thus it’s a handy software to defragment hard drive for Windows.
This free edition of O&O Defrag is quite easy to use but has few limitations as well. Such as boot time defragmentation is not possible here and only two defragmentation methods are available in free edition. While on the other hand, professional edition of this software provides boot time defragmentation, eight different types of defragmentation methods, lets you create multiple number of schedules for automatic defragmentation etc. So if you find this free edition useful enough, then you can think of its paid version as well. Or else no problem to keep using this free version.
Some Key Features of O&O Defrag Are As Follows:
- A simple software that defrag hard disk of PC quickly and thoroughly.
- Quick configuration facility available using which you can schedule automatic defragmentation per week, every three-week, per month at specified time. It is quite helpful for beginners.
- Provides disk report in which you can see analyzed folders, files, fragmented files before and after defragmentation and more. See the below screenshot:
- Generate reports of disk analysis and defragmentation process which you can see on its main interface.
- Free of cost for everyone. It is 17.1 mb in size.
How To Use O&O Defrag For Defragmenting Hard Disk?
Once you will download it then you can install and run it on your PC. Download link is present below. For downloading it, you have to provide a valid email address. Download, install it, and run it using desktop shortcut. While using it for the first time, it will provide a quick configuration window for automatic scheduling defragmentation process like the below screenshot. If you want, you can schedule defragmentation or can skip it and can configure it later from main interface of O&O Defrag.
After this, you can access main interface of this software where you will find available hard disks. Its interface is divided in three different sections. Top most section lets you analyze hard disks and start/pause/stop defragment process using available buttons. Here other options are also available but most of them are usable with paid version only.
Middle section of this software shows hard drives along with their status, total files, fragmented files, degree of fragmentation etc. And the bottom section provides multiple tabs using which you can view analyzed reports, drive status, file status (to view fragmented files, large fragmented files, large locked files of selected hard drive), ClusterView of hard drive etc.
All these sections will let you easily work with this software and you won’t find any difficulty to defragment hard disks.
Conclusion:
O&O Defrag is a nice software that can analyze fragmentation percentage of hard disks and automatically performs defragmentation after analysis. Moreover, its feature of scheduling automatic defragmentation for weekly or monthly basis is appreciable. But as most of the features are not usable in this free edition, so you might feel disappointed. You can upgrade to professional version to get another features or can continue using this free edition.
Similar software to defragment hard drives: My Defragmenter, UltraDefrag, PerfectDisk Free Defrag, and Disk Speedup.
