Solve issues when defragmenting a hard disk

Q I am using Ashampoo to defragment my hard disk. It reports that it cannot completely defragment all the files on the hard disk because there is either a locked file or there is insufficient space on my hard disk.

The latter seems unlikely as there is 76GB of free space on the hard disk. Therefore, it must be the locked file, so how can I unlock this and complete the defragmentation?

Anthony J Day

A For a file to be defragmented, the defragmentation utility must be able to move the different bits of it around the disk. This cannot happen if the file is being edited; imagine what would happen if someone kept moving the ingredients while you were cooking, even after they had been added to the bowl.

To avoid the problems of locked files you should try to avoid doing anything else with the computer during defragmentation. Some files are always in use and so can’t be defragmented, a special file used by Windows called the Paging file is one such file. It is also quite big.

Given that there will always be some files and part of the disk that the computer can’t defragment, leaving a few fragmented files is nothing to worry about. It’s more important that you run the defragmentation utility at least once every couple of weeks to keep the number fragmented files to a minimum.

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