Is defragmenting bad for computers

Defragmenting is a necessary part of computer maintenance for the hard disk drive to run more efficiently. In the grand scheme of computers, it puts the hard drive through its paces with reading, writing, erasing, and well, everything a hard drive is designed to do. In that sense, it pushes the hard drive closer to its MTBF point (Mean Time Between Failure); however, not to the point where you need to be "afraid of defragmenting your hard drive because it may fail tomorrow". That is certainly not the case. Just like life is meant to be lived, hard drives are meant to store your data.

Defragmenting your hard drive will save the computer time reading files it needs to access (whether by you prompting it or through your computer's normal disk activity). Consider this analogy:
- imagine for a moment you have a jigsaw puzzle of 5000 pieces
- this puzzle is spread out a little in each room of your house
- in each room, you have several tables on which parts of the puzzle are assembled
- your goal is to see the whole picture of the jigsaw puzzle Imagine how much time it would take to go around to each room just to get the "big picture". Of course, it would be more efficient to have the pieces of the puzzle assembled in one area so you can take it all in. So it is with defragmenting. It takes the pieces of different parts of a file and makes them more efficient to read. This, in turn, speeds up performance of your computer. This translates to programs starting faster, your computer being more responsive to your commands, applications working more smoothly, etc. Overall, defragmenting is not bad for the computer, just a necessary piece of maintenance that goes along with the ebb and tide of file changes (adding/deleting programs, saving and deleting documents, etc.)