How often should I defragment or clean my hard drive?

Most modern operating systems (including Windows and macOS) will take care of defragmenting and cleaning your hard drive automatically. If you notice decreased performance, however, it may be a good idea to manually run a disk defragmenter or clean up utility to free up space and improve performance. As a general rule of thumb, if you feel like your system is running slowly or is cluttered, try running a defragmentation or clean up utility to see if it helps.