After years of using various disk defragmenters, I’ve compiled this list of the absolute best free options. These recommendations are based on my experiences with these types of apps on my PC.

All versions of Windows include a built-in defragmenter, which I have listed in this list. In most cases, however, a dedicated program will do a better job.

The main reason I rate Smart Defrag as the #1 best free defragmenter is because it is great at scheduling an automatic defragmentation. I also appreciate the ability to remove fragments from locked files during startup.

Smart Defrag can also exclude files and folders from defragmentation/analysis and skip defragmenting files larger than a certain file size.