CCleaner or Disk defragmenter
@sinnedsejatnom (1311)
Philippines
January 5, 2012 4:04am CST
When I am going clean my computer, I always use the ccleaner program. How is this program different with disk defragmenter? Which is best to use to clean up our computers?
4 responses
@urbandekay (18278)
•
5 Jan 12
Use both, these programs do different things; Ccleaner removes what the first C stands for!
Disk defragmenter 'repacks' the disk drive so that the various parts of a file are stored consecutively which speeds up their being read
all the best urban
@sinnedsejatnom (1311)
• Philippines
5 Jan 12
Thanks for the tip. But how long will the defragmentation be?
@Bluedoll (16773)
• Canada
5 Jan 12
Forever. When you delete files a placeholder remains where the file used to be. All this means is that it takes a little longer to find things. Defrag helps to organize files much like pulling it would in a filing cabinet. It is maintance so can be done periodically with computer useage.
@owlwings (43910)
• Cambridge, England
5 Jan 12
Actually, Bluedoll & sinnedsejatnom, it's more accurate to say that, when you delete a file, all that happens is that the index entry to that file is marked as 'Deleted' (in fact, the index entry is changed so that it marks the file as 'in the Trash Can'). Nothing else happens at all: the file still exists on the disk and the index entry is still there. When you empty the Trash Can, the index entry is changed again and the indexing system (NTFS) says, effectively, "this space is now vacant" (the file's data is still physically on the disk at this point and could easily be recovered). When new files are written to disk, they may partially or completely overwrite the area where deleted files were.
Because new files are unlikely to be exactly the same size as the deleted files, the space where old files used to be may not be large enough for all of the new file, so parts of the file may end up in physically different parts of the disk.
Imagine a (mad) librarian taking old books off the shelf to make room for new ones. If the new book is fatter than the old one and won't fit in the space, the librarian just rips the book apart and puts one part in one space and the other part somewhere else, making a note, of course, on where to find the different parts of the book when it's needed.
As you can imagine, after a while using this system, especially when the library shelves are almost full, it takes longer and longer to find all the parts a book has been split into. What defragmentation does is to physically reorganise the 'shelves' and put all the scattered parts of the 'book' back together.
1 person likes this
@owlwings (43910)
• Cambridge, England
5 Jan 12
CCleaner simply deletes unnecessary files (and registry entries), leaving free disk space where the files were. Defragmentation physically reorganises the spaces left so that parts of files which were stored in different places on the disk (see my explanation above) are brought together to be physically contiguous.
@sivaeinfo (220)
• India
5 Jan 12
Both software has a unique working nature in it. CCleaner is a best one to remove and clean up the cookies, caches, temporary files, unwanted files which is dumped on your hard drive. Disk defragmenter is an tool which is available in all PC. his can be used to improve the disk space, speed up the operation, arrange the files stored in your hard disk.