What is a hard disk drive defragmenter?

The term defragment: To reorganize a computer file to eliminate fragmentation.

Data on a computer hard disk drive is written on the first available sector; so many files that have daily updates or saves tend to be heavily fragmented or portions of the file written throughout the disk.  Microsoft devised a way for those files to be put together in an orderly and chronological manner.  Microsoft’s Disk Defragmenter or Defrag is a software tool that allows the user to reorganize the sporadic writes of a hard disk drive file into a contiguous manner.  Disaster Recovery Group data recovery engineers praise this type of programming as users can expect faster access times from their hard drives if they hear many rapid head seeks or see pauses during file transfers or file accessing.

As an example; using 1 ~ 9.

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This is obviously fragmented and your eyes can tell there are nine numerals there but counting takes alot more time to process.  Your eyes must jump back and forth and then process the numbers much like a hard disk drive read/write head does.  Making the number sequence more contiguous speeds up the time frame but with hard drive file storage there will always be some fragment of a file.  A general sequencing will take place.

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 Regarding  recovery of data, a contiguous data stream is always better than a severly fragmented one.  If running a FAT16 or FAT32 (File Allocation Table) and a FAT overwrite or corruption occurs having your data defragmented makes a substantial difference in the recoverability of the files.  Defragmenting your hard drive saves energy and time for the hard drive and in worst case scenarios for data recovery professionals in these particular cases.