Versions through Windows NT 3.51 did not have an application programming interface for moving data clusters on hard disks.

Initial releases of Windows NT lacked a defragmentation tool. Windows NT, however, did not offer a Defrag utility, and Symantec was suggested by others as a possible alternative for the utility.

Several third party software developers marketed defragmenters to fill this gap. At this time, Microsoft's MS-DOS did not defragment hard disks. Microsoft Drive Optimizer was first officially shipped with Windows XP.įrom Windows 8, the program was renamed to Microsoft Drive Optimizer, with some references changed to say Defragment and Optimize Drives or simply Optimize Drives.Īs early as the end of 1982, the IBM PC DOS operating system that shipped with early IBM Personal Computers included a Disk Volume Organization Optimizer to defragment the 5¼-inch floppy disks that those machines used. Defragmentation may decrease lifespan for certain technologies, e.g. However, defragmentation is not helpful on storage devices such as solid state drives, USB drives or SD cards that use flash memory to increase speeds, as these drives do not use a head. As a result of the decreased read and write times, Microsoft Drive Optimizer decreases system startup times for systems starting from magnetic storage devices such as a hard drive. Defragmenting a disk minimizes head travel, which reduces the time it takes to read files from and write files to the disk. Microsoft Drive Optimizer (formerly Disk Defragmenter) is a utility in Microsoft Windows designed to increase data access speed by rearranging files stored on a disk to occupy contiguous storage locations, a technique called defragmentation.

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