How to Speed Up Hard Drive in Windows 11/10/8/7 [100% Working Solutions]

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What Cause Hard Drive to Run Slow
How to Speed Up Hard Drive in Windows 11/10/8/7 - 8 Efficient Ways

Hard drives are vital to computer systems. However, hard drives can also slow down over time. However, you need not worry as you can easily solve the problem by speeding up your hard drive with proper maintenance. This article provides detailed guides on speeding up hard drives in Windows. First, let's learn why the hard drive runs slowly.

What Cause Hard Drive to Run Slow

The performance of the old hard disk will inevitably become slower and slower because high read and write frequency means the disadvantage of high loss. Once the hard disk is broken, you will face the "computer running slow" issue, and the PC may crash randomly. Here are some issues that can slow down your hard drive.

Bad sectors: The more bad sectors your hard drive has, the slower it will be.
Lots of temporary files: They can accumulate and keep taking up hard drive space.
Viruses and malware on hard drives: Malicious applications can attack your computer with illegal missions or insert viruses to cause damage.
File fragmentation: Fragments of individual files are scattered throughout the hard drive and cannot be accessed quickly.

Sure, there are many other reasons why our hard drives get slow, but no matter what the reason is, knowing how to solve the "HDD slow" issue is very important to improve our daily use. Continue to learn.

By the way, there are some other links related to hard drives. Click them to learn.

Internal Hard Drive Not Showing Up Windows 11 Low Disk Space But Nothing to Delete

How to Speed Up Hard Drive in Windows 11/10/8/7 - 8 Efficient Ways

All the reasons above may slow down your hard drive, but we can still protect our hard drive in daily use. In this section, you can see and learn eight effective ways to speed up your hard drive:

Way 1. Partition Your Hard Drive
Way 2. Check Bad Sectors
Way 3. Delete Temporary Files
Way 4. Enable Write Caching
Way 5. Defrag Your Hard Drive
Way 6. Run CHKDSK Command
Way 7. Run Disk Cleanup
Way 8. Remove Unwanted Application

Now, let's start with the first way and partition your hard drive to speed up your hard drive.

Way 1. Partition Your Hard Drive

Partitioning your hard drive properly can greatly speed up your hard drive. The more organized your hard disk is, the faster your hard drive gets. There is a reliable tool for you to partition your hard drive efficiently, Qiling Disk Master. It supports all Windows versions, and you can use it to manage these partitions, like resizing/merging/splitting/deleting/creating partitions. Now, download this tool and partition your hard drives.

Free Download
Windows 11/10/8.1/8/7, 100% Secure

Step 1. Launch Qiling Disk Master to check for free space at the Partition Manager section.

If your hard drive has unallocated space, jump to Step 3 to create partition.
If the hard drive has no unallocated space, continue with Step 2.

Step 2. Shrink a disk partition to create unallocated space.

Right-click on the target drive partition with a lot free space and select "Resize/Move".

Drag either end of the partition rightwards or leftwards to shrink the partition size so as to get ample unallocated space. You can visually know how much space you've decreased in the "Partition size" area. Click "OK".

Click "Proceed" to save all the changes.

Go back to Partition Manager, there should be unallocated space appearing on the same disk and you can continue with the next step to create new partition on your hard drive.

Step 3. Create a new partition with unallocated space on the target hard drive.

Right-click on the unallocated space and choose "Create".

Customize the partiton size, partition drive letter, partition label, file system (NTFS, FAT32, EXT2/3/4, exFAT) and more in the Advanced Settings.

Finally, click "Execute * Task" and "Apply" to complete creating partition with the unallocated space on your disk. Repeat the steps to partition a hard drive and get many more partitions.

Way 2. Check Bad Sectors

The more bad sectors your hard drive gets, the slower it will be. Qiling Disk Master can help do a disk surface test and scan your hard drive for bad sectors. Here are the steps for how to use Qiling Disk Master to scan bad sectors:

Free Download
Windows 11/10/8.1/8/7, 100% Secure

Step 1. Open Qiling Disk Master. Right-click the disk that you want to check, and then click "Surface Test".

Step 2. The operation will be immediately performed and all bad sectors will be marked as red.

After the disk surface test, you can locate all the bad sectors on your hard drive.

Way 3. Delete Temporary Files

Should you delete temp files? Yes, the browsers like Chrome, and Firefox, will store lots of temporary files, which take up space and slow down your hard drive. Follow the guide below to free up hard drive space. Here are the steps:

Step 1. Click on the Windows icon and choose "Settings."

Step 2. Click Storage > This PC > Temporary files. Windows will list all the temp files on this PC.

Step 3. Choose what you want to delete and click "Remove."

delete temp files

Way 4. Enable Write Caching

Enable write caching can also improve the hard drive speed since it's stored in a NAND chip on the hard drive before it's recorded. Here are the steps:

Step 1. Hit the "Windows" + "R" keys to open the "Run" window. Then type devmgmt.msc to open "Device Manager."

open run window

Step 2. Choose the target hard drive under the "Disk Drives" section.

Step 3. Right-click on it and choose "Properties."

Step 4. Click the "Policies" in the "Properties" window.

enable write caching

Step 5. Click "Better performance (default)" and tap OK.

Way 5. Defrag Your Hard Drive

Fragments develop with time, causing hard drives to run slowly. After you delete or access files, they may be divided into multiple parts, which will be scattered all over. Hence, we need to defrag the hard drive.

Step 1. Type optimize in the search box on Windows and click the Defragment and Optimize Drives icon to launch it.

Step 2. Choose the target hard drive and optimize it.

optimize hard drive

Way 6. Run CHKDSK Command

You can run the chkdsk command, which checks your storage device for any bad sectors and attempts to repair them. Here is the guide:

Step 1. Hit Windows + R to open a Run window. Type cmd to open Command Prompt.

Step 2. Type chkdsk e: /f /r/x in the new window. (Replace letter e with the correct drive letter)

type commands

But when typing commands, be careful. Wrong commands can easily cause data loss, so if you don't have a lot of computer experience, Qiling Disk Master is a better choice.

By the way, there are some other links related to CHKDSK commands. Click them if you want to learn more about it:

CHKDSK /F /R SFC vs DISM

Way 7. Run Disk Cleanup

Disk Cleanup scans your storage devices for any unwanted temporary files and deletes them, which will improve hard drive performance. Here are the steps:

Step 1. Click "This PC," right-click the target drive, and choose "Disk Cleanup."

run disk cleanup

Step 2. It will list a lot of files and file sizes taken. Then choose the files you want to delete. Then, click "OK."

Way 8. Remove Unwanted Application

For programs that you no longer need now, you can uninstall them to free up disk space and speed up your disk. Here is how:

Step 1. Right-click on the Windows Start Menu and click the "Apps and Features" option.

Step 2. Then locate the programs you no longer need and right-click on them. Select "Uninstall."

Step 3. You can repeat this process to remove all unwanted apps.

Conclusion

This article covers eight ways how to speed up a hard drive, and we hope they can help. Qiling Disk Master is a trustworthy disk partition tool. It can extend the C drive to fix the "low disk space" error and allocate space to the target drive. Besides, it can convert MBR to GPT without any data loss. Don't hesitate to download it to help with your disk partition issue.

Free Download
Windows 11/10/8.1/8/7, 100% Secure

Speed Up Hard Drive FAQs

We've learned eight ways to speed up hard drives. This part list three other popular questions related to our topic. Check the answers below if you need them.

1. How do I fix a slow hard drive?

Slow hard drives can be repaired. You can try the following solutions:

Run disk cleanup
Check bad sectors
Partition hard drives
Enable write caching
Run CHKDSK commands
Remove unwanted application and temp files

2. Why are HDDs so slow?

There are several reasons why HDD gets slow, such as:

Virus
Bad sectors
File fragmentation
Too many temp files

3. Why is HDD slower than SSD?

Because SSDs use circuits and have no physical moving parts. This reduces wait times when you start up and reduces delays when opening applications or performing heavy computing tasks.