Best Free Hard Drive Optimizer: Optimize Hard Drive Performance Easily

Is it safe to optimize hard drive?

Hard drive is a part of the hardware in a computer, usually used to store operating system, programs, documents, and other personal data. After using a long time, you are likely to face the dilemma of a freezing computer. At this time, it seems like optimizing hard drive becomes urgent.

According to Microsoft official statement, optimizing your drives is a good option, helping your PC run smoother and boot up faster. Just enter "Defrag" on the search bar, choose "Defragment and Optimize Drives", select the target drive and click "Optimize" button.

Although defragging is safe and simple, it is not enough to ensure your PC is optimized for its best performance. Therefore, the demand for a free hard drive optimizer is picking up.

Why need a hard drive optimizer?

The hard drive optimization software is a tool that brings you great convenience in boosting your disk performance. With a free hard drive optimizer, you can enjoy these merits:

✦ A safe and quick optimization process. A professional disk optimizer won't do any harm to your hard drive itself, your data, or your system. And the optimization is finished within seconds.

✦ Multiple optimization choices. If you want to speed up your computer, you will not be limited to disk defragment, you can also clean up junk files, increase system partition size, etc.

✦ Instant and effective result. The built-in Defrag feature only increases the speed by solving file defragment problems while a free hard drive optimizer makes it from all aspects, so the optimization works in the moment.

What's the best free hard drive optimizer?

AOMEI Partition Assistant Standard, a free disk manager for Windows 11/10/8/8.1/7/XP/Vista users, is regarded as the best free hard drive optimizer for its practical and powerful functions in optimizing your hard drives.

To boost your disk speed, AOMEI Partition Assistant Standard offers two basic free means: one is scanning and completely removing all kinds of junk files from your computer at one time, and the other is defragging the hard drives to put files together, saving time accessing the data.

In addition, this hard drive optimization software does more for your PC maintenance, such as merging two partitions or non-adjacent unallocated space, deleting unused partitions, wiping hard drive, cloning disk, etc.

How do I optimize my hard drive (free and easy steps)

In this part, you will learn the detailed guide on how to optimize your drives using AOMEI Partition Assistant Standard in two different ways. To begin with, download this free hard drive optimizer on your Windows computer.

▶ Way 1. Clean up junk files

When more and more free space is released by cleaning junk files, the OS can get a good environment for running, thus, your PC will become faster.

Step 1. Launch and open AOMEI Partition Assistant Standard, and then click "Free up" > "PC Cleaner".

Step 2. In the pop-up window, click "Start Scan" to scan for junk files.

Step 3. Wait for a while until the scanning process completes. If you want to stop, just click "Cancel Scan".

Step 4. After the scan is completed, all kinds of available junk files will be listed. Then, tick the junk files you want to clean, then click "Clean All" to begin the cleaning process.

Step 5. When the cleaning is done, click "Back" to exit.

▶ Way 2. Defrag the hard drive

The process of defragging clears the spaces between files, so the data gets compressed effectively and in turn, the speed of your PC gets increased.

Note: Please don't degrag your SSD, or your performance and lifespan will be damaged. To optimize an SSD, you can ask "secure erase SSD" for help.

Step 1. Open AOMEI software, in the interface, right-click on the target disk and click "Disk Defrag".

Step 2. Select the target disk and click "Analyze".

Step 3. When the analysis is completed, the disk will be scored. You can click “Details” to get more information or click "Defrag" option to start defragging.

Step 4. Wait for a while, the defragment will be completed soon and you will get a new score again. Set a schedule to perform disk defragment regularly or scroll down to learn more ways of disk optimization.

Bonus tip: Upgrade to advanced disk optimizer for better optimization methods

For those who need to use computers frequently, only basic maintenance is not enough to keep their PC always in a smooth and fast state. Luckily, AOMEI Partition Assistant Standard, the best free hard drive optimizer, is available to be upgraded to the Professional edition for more advanced optimization features.

The same as the Standard edition, the Pro one works hard to help you get a faster hard drive. Different from the free edition, the Pro edition comes with amazing optimization methods, boosting your hard drive in a quicker and more effective mode.

Next, I'll introduce you 3 most popular functions in promoting hard drive performance. You are encouraged to download the demo version for a try.

▌ Feature 1. App mover

When using a computer, downloading various applications is inevitable. As time goes by, a lot of used or unused programs are piled up on your hard drive, especially on the C drive. For those you won’t need or rarely use, you can directly uninstall them or move them to a different place via "App Mover" feature. Thus, more room on the system will be made, and in turn, your PC can run faster.

▌ Feature 2. Allocate free space

If you are not willing to move your apps/files, you can extend your C drive by allocating free space from another drive to C drive. The "Allocate Free Space" feature of AOMEI software makes the procedure very easy, you can realize it in only three clicks.

▌ Feature 3. Migrate OS to SSD

If the OS running on HDD can't satisfy your need for high speed, moving OS to SSD should be a good choice because SSD has better performance than HDD. But many users are stopped by the complicated and time-consuming OS migration work. Now, with the help of "Migrate OS" feature in AOMEI software, transferring OS becomes an easy task. You won't be asked to reinstall OS or restart Windows, and all your customized settings will be kept on your new SSD.

Conclusion

How do I optimize my hard drive? You can find the best free hard drive optimizer and its advanced version in this post to help with disk performance enhancement. As you can see, AOMEI Partition Assistant is such wonderful hard drive optimization software that you can adopt several features together to maximize the optimization results.

In addition, if you're a Windows Server user, don't worry, you can switch to the Server edition.