With that in mind: even if you could defrag a network drive, the data would have to be read from the remote drive, then sent to your local PC over the network for temporary holding until the defrag program figures out where to put it back The remote PC (because they are locked), the defrag would not be able to Since the defrag program running on your local PC can't move certain files on The way defrag works is to move files from one location on the drive to another so that the files are placed in a contiguous (side by side) manner - whether you're defragging according to most accessed files, or to optimize free space. Operating system files on the remote PC would be considered ' locked' because they are resident in memory, and therefore With that said, there is no way for a defrag program running on your local PC to know which files are in use on the remote PC.

When it comes to file permissions, the most important thing to realize is that certain files on your wife's PC will be constantly in use (loaded into memory)īy the operating system, and this list changes as each second passes. Now, when you click on 'My Computer' or 'This PC' the mapped network drive or folder is displayed as drive 'Z', alongside your 'C' and 'D' drives (for example).Įven though the network 'Z' drive appears as if it were part of your system, the truth is that your wife's PC still 'owns' this drive as far asįile permissions are concerned. If you then right click an available shared drive (or folder), you can map the network drive to your PC - let's call it drive 'Z'.

Normally if you go to 'My Computer' or 'This PC', then click on the 'Network' icon, then click on a specific network computer, Windows will display all the available shared folders pertaining to a particular PC. Let's assume that your wife has a PC on the network and she's given everyone on the network access to one of her folders. Why Defragging a Network Drive isn't Possibleįirst, I'll explain why defragging over a network won't work. Workaround to defragging a network drive, and I'll explain in detail below. Simply put: your systemĭoes not have permission to move these files around. Is not possible - the easiest way to explain 'why' is that the remote drives are

The reason you can't find a program to defrag a network drive is because this Any suggestions on how to defrag a network drive, or a program that can provide this functionality? ' I have several drives on my network that I'd like to defrag, but none of the defrag software programs I've tried allow me to defrag a network drive.

Optimize and defragment drive