Over this span of time most people would upgrade their equipment but as OP said finances don't allow it. Still defragmentation is only a necessity as you filled up and delete fairly large sections of the drive over a period of months (for the average user). I know with HDD's latency is much more of a factor when seeking information making defragmenting desirable. The built in is horrible, It says 0% fragmentation but when i use Defragler there are still tons of fragmentation files.Īnd i could feel it especially when gaming because my games files are stored in the HDD.ĭrive RPM does affect but its not what you might think because when say your games has a lot of fragmentation, The gameplay would be very choppy almost feels like a rubberbanding lag and the texture just pop in very late. Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available Storage: Team - L5 LITE 480 GB 2.5' Solid State Drive ($52.99 Newegg) Storage: Team - L5 LITE 240 GB 2.5' Solid State Drive ($29.99 Newegg Business) These are not a super great brand, but you can generally pay about 10-15 more and get a solid name brand drive for these sizes. These are the cheapest SSD options for 240 and 480gb. Sure 120Gb is not a lot but is enough for your OS and game.

That's less than the price of the game you are trying to play. Just FYI a 120Gb SSD is $30 at the moment. If you don't notice any improvement from that then your issue is not with fragmented data and better programs will not help. The built in windows defrag is good enough to test your theory of improving your loading times.

Best free disk defrag program