defrage

[etype]

what does defraging the pc do

[ugly_bob]

de-fragments the hard drive
ie rearranges where the data is stored.
It will speed up your hard drive access times, sometimes minimally, sometimes significantly - depending on how fragmented it is at the moment.

[stevie21]

One file on your PC can be stored in many different bits scattered all over your hard drive.
Defragging tidies this up so that all of the bits of each file are stored together and easier/faster to find and read.

[Mattk]

an anallergy i once heard that your pc's hdd is your local supermarket car park with the hdd information being the cars parked randomly all over the place.de-fragging parks the cars neatly next to each other at one end of the car park leaving the remainder free.

[CliffsPansy]

Further to Mattk answer. I recently called in someone as my computer was very slow - among other things he asked how long ago it had been de-fragmented and I had no idea what he was talking about. He explained that when the computer is asked for something it would go to the neat stack of files and extract that information. However, when the info is no longer needed it just drops that (as a piece of paper) on the floor. Next time the info is needed, it has to scrabble around on these hundreds of different pieces of paper on the floor until it finds the bit needed. By defragging, all this hundreds of bit of info are put back into their files on the shelf and so are immediately found when next needed. This info made sense to me and I now defrag regularly.