Defragmenting Hard Drive

[yordan 10]

OK, no problem, you are right in the center of the spot.I guess that you don't need to keep each movie on your hard drive, after some time you will run out of space, so probably you remove the movie as soon as you have finished watching the movie.This creates fragmentation : when you remove a movie, it leaves a hole. The next movie cannot go in the empty space because it does not have the same size. If you create a text file, it will take place at a random place. If you edit this file the next day, the wordprocessor will create a temporary copy for automatic saving on a periodical basis; when you exit, all the data are written on the original text file and the temporary copy is removed; if there is not enough contiguous space for storing the new text, the text will be splitted in two parts of the disk : the first part storing the beginning of the text, and ending with a redirection to the disk space where the send part is.The philosophy of all this is, that you should from time to time (e.g. on a monthly basis) have a look at the fragmentation state of your disk : how much fragmentation you have (10% or 70 %?) and the way the data are scattered on the disk : everything packed at the beginning of the disk for faster access, or a lot of holes everywhere? If the fragmentation ratio is high and the data are scattered everywhere, you should perform a defrag. The first defrag will last a lot of time, the next ones will be far shorter if you defrag frequently.And you will see a big difference on the disk-to-disk tasks as well as on the standard usage.

[Ahsaniqbalkmc 0]

OK, no problem, you are right in the center of the spot.I guess that you don't need to keep each movie on your hard drive, after some time you will run out of space, so probably you remove the movie as soon as you have finished watching the movie.

You are right about the movies but the setups of various games I own are kept on my hard drive sort of permanently. Some of these files are even larger than the movie files and they sit tight in one place. How does this effect the fragmentation of the disk.

This creates fragmentation : when you remove a movie, it leaves a hole. The next movie cannot go in the empty space because it does not have the same size. If you create a text file, it will take place at a random place. If you edit this file the next day, the wordprocessor will create a temporary copy for automatic saving on a periodical basis; when you exit, all the data are written on the original text file and the temporary copy is removed; if there is not enough contiguous space for storing the new text, the text will be splitted in two parts of the disk : the first part storing the beginning of the text, and ending with a redirection to the disk space where the send part is.

Wow...
This is all new information for me. And it has provided me with an idea of how the operating system works with the storage.
The information on splitting of a file and the redirection process is kind of amazing for me. I didn't have the slightest of idea about files being managed in this way. And now I can think clearer about different files of different sizes organized in such a way that the entire disk space is used. This provides great insight into the way hard drives work. By combining this information with the fact that traditional hard disks have well-defined sectors for data storage, one can think more clearly about how the hard disks are used by the operating system for stroing various files.

The philosophy of all this is, that you should from time to time (e.g. on a monthly basis) have a look at the fragmentation state of your disk : how much fragmentation you have (10% or 70 %?) and the way the data are scattered on the disk : everything packed at the beginning of the disk for faster access, or a lot of holes everywhere? If the fragmentation ratio is high and the data are scattered everywhere, you should perform a defrag. The first defrag will last a lot of time, the next ones will be far shorter if you defrag frequently.And you will see a big difference on the disk-to-disk tasks as well as on the standard usage.

This explanation is solid enough for a computer user like me to defragment the hard disk on a regular basis. My laptop is not a performance beast and I think tweaks like this would help me get the most out of my machine.

[Ahsaniqbalkmc 0]

I have two additional questions for you @yordan..1) Does the way a disk is partitioned have any effect on the fragmentation (and consequently on the performance) of the hard disk?2) Is there anythink like fragmentation in SSDs (Solid State Drives) and USB thumb drives.?

[manuleka 0]

i believe fregmentation isn't really necessary on SSD as it doesn't have moving parts to have any significant improvement on performance....