How to Defragment Your Hard Drive in Command Prompt

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This guide will teach you how to do a manual disk defrag through the Windows command prompt. Some Windows users have trouble with the Disk Defragmenter program so this is a solution to that problem, and might come in handy for other instances, too.

Steps

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  1. Step 1 Click the Start Button and type in 'cmd.exe' into the search box.
  2. Step 2 Right click on 'cmd.exe' and select the option 'Run as Administrator.'
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  3. Step 3 In the window that pops up, type 'defrag C:
    /U'
  4. Step 4 Wait for the defragmentation to complete.
    This will take some time depending on how large and fragmented your disk is.
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Tips

  • If you have more than one disk that needs to be formatted, add it in to the command, like this 'defrag C: F: /U'
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Warnings

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About This Article

wikiHow is a “wiki,” similar to Wikipedia, which means that many of our articles are co-written by multiple authors. To create this article, volunteer authors worked to edit and improve it over time. This article has been viewed 64,040 times.
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Co-authors: 4
Updated: January 1, 2018
Views: 64,040
Categories: Command Prompt
Thanks to all authors for creating a page that has been read 64,040 times.

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