what does defrag or defragmenting mean?hows it work?

[tweenyb]

what does defrag or defragmenting mean?hows it work?
Thanx in advance x

[stevie21]

If you save one file on your computer, it's physically saved in (for example) 100 tiny parts. Defragmenting puts all of these parts together so that they're easier to find and read.

Without it, your computer has to scramble all over the place (because the file is fragmented) to read the 100 pieces and it takes longer.

[Mattk]

over time your pc fragments files,scattering them all over your hard drive.de-fragmenting joins them all back together to save room and processing time.imagine a half full supermarket car park with the cars parked randomly(fragmented),then park all the cars up one end with no spaces - your pc has now been defragmented!

[fo3nix]

Just to add: with more modern filesystems like NTFS (what you most likely have if you're on Windows XP), you only need to do a defrag once every few months or so, not every few weeks as with previous filesystems.