Running Disk Defragmenter from command line in Windows 7

Thursday, 08 December 2011 05:12 |

Written by Michael |

Disk defragmentation is the process of consolidating fragmented files on your computer's hard disk. Fragmentation happens to a hard disk over time as you save, or delete files. The changes that you save to a file are often stored at a location on the hard disk that's different from the original file. Additional changes are saved to even more different locations. Over time, both the file and the hard disk itself become fragmented, and your computer slows down as it has to look in many different places to open a file.

Disk Defragmenter is a tool that rearranges the data on your hard disk and reunites fragmented files so your computer can run more efficiently. Disk Defragmenter from command prompt gives you additional options to defragment your disk. Follow following steps to use disk defragmenter through command line

Step I - Type CMD on your Windows 7 search, right click cmd and run it as a administrator as shown below

win7activate

Step II - Type defrag followed by the drive letter as shown, lets say you have 2 drive C and D and you want to defrag drive D, your command should look like this

defrag d: [-c/-a/-f/r/-v/-w/-b]

defrag

The options available for the defrag command are as follows

–c This option defragments all volumes on the computer; use this switch without specifying a specific drive letter or mount point.

–a This option analyzes the specified volume and displays a summary of the analysis report.

-f This option consolidates the free space on the specified volume, reducing the chance that large new files will be fragmented.

/r This option defragments multiple volumes in parallel. If your volumes are on physically separate disks, you might save a bit of time by using this switch.

-v This option displays complete (verbose) reports. When it used in combination with –a, this switch displays only the analysis report. When used alone, it displays both the analysis and defragmentation reports.

–w This option performs a full defragmentation by consolidating all file fragments, regardless of size.

–b This option defragments only boot files and applications while leaving the rest of the drive undisturbed.

Note: The Disk Defragmenter run from the command prompt does not provide any progress bar. Just a blinking cursor is shown. You can click the Command Prompt window and press CTRL+C to stop the process.