First, press the Windows key or click the search box on your taskbar and type “defragment.” Click the “Defragment and Optimize Your Drives” shortcut in the Start menu.

The Optimize Drives window will appear, and it will list all of the drives in your system that are eligible for optimization and defragmentation. If one of your drives doesn’t show up, it may be because Windows 10 can only optimize drives formatted in the NTFS filesystem. Drives formatted as exFAT will not appear in the list.

Select the drive you’d like to defragment in the list, then click “Optimize.”

On a hard disk drive, this runs a defragmentation routine. On SSDs, it runs a TRIM command, which can potentially speed up the operation of your drive, but it isn’t really necessary as Windows does this in the background with modern drives.

If the disk needs optimizing and defragmenting, the process will begin. You will see a percentage complete progress indicator in the Current Status column.

When the process is complete, the time in the Last Run column will update, and the Current Status will read something similar to “OK (0% fragmented).”

Congratulations, your drive has been successfully defragmented. If you’d like, you can schedule regular defragmentation sessions in the Optimize Drives window by clicking the “Turn On” button in the “Scheduled Optimization” section. That way, you won’t have to remember to do it manually in the future.

Feel free to close the Optimize Drives window and use your computer as normal—and don’t be surprised if you feel a little extra spring in your computer’s step.