Why would i have to defragment my computer and would i loose any important info doing so?
by 
Sizzorz
ANSWERS: 5
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You should be defragging your computer at least weekly to clear up room on your harddrive. No, you won't lose any information.
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You can use the defrag tool that comes with Windows in system tools. Takes a few minutes but it organizes your hard drive to help it run more efficiently.
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Actually, defragmenting ones computer drive is somewhat overrated. Imagine your hard drive is a box with 100 partitions in it. Now imagine you have a 'file' that is 3 sheets of paper. Your computer might store those sheets in partitions 32, 65, and 86. It knows *exactly* where each sheet is, they're just put in physically disparate locations. When you defrag the hard drive, those 3 sheets get put in partitions 4,5 and 6, so that they can be found and retrieved more quickly. I sometimes go *months* between defrags, and I notice very little performance loss (or gain when I finally do defrag). The other nice thing about defragging the drive is that the software does a reasonably thorough check of the entire disk. This can reveal problems that you might need to correct before they get worse. Also, while I will never say "never" when it comes to computers, I cannot recall hearing of an instance when someone lost data during a defragmentation process. So, defrag if it makes you happy, or put it off if you can't be bothered. You probably won't notice much difference either way.
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When the files on your disk are fragmented, they may be split up into multiple segments on different areas of the disk, so that to read a file, the disk has to be read from here and there. Defragmenting the disk reorganises the files so that each one is on one continuous stretch of the hard disk, making it faster to read. You should not lose anything. The best way to defragment your disk is to start Windows in "safe mode", close every other program including those on your system notification area, and then leave the computer to defragment without using it, since each time a program writes something to the hard disk it has to start all over again.
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Everyone has a different idea about Defragging, if your system is newer like as in Vista then it is set to do this automatically on its own. If you have XP then the person would have to take the time to do it their self, the program that comes with windows is OK but over rated. If you use it, a person then should run it 2-3 times in a row even if system says not needed. You are better of downloading software to run to do a better job, think of defragging like putting a library in order from A-Z. http://www.snapfiles.com/freeware/ type defrag in the search box choose Defragmention tools Diskeeper Pro is a great program!
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