[Thinkpad] Re: Windows & H/D Defragging

Hello,

I would imagine that web surfing fills the Temporary Internet Files
directory (usually found beneath the %USERPROFILE%\Local Settings\
directory) with many small files and subdirectories just from viewing
web pages. Given the amount of web pages one can visit in just a day
I can understand why there might be reports of "excessive" disk
fragmentation.

I have wondered about the performance of disk defragmentation software
myself, especially under file systems like NTFS.

As I understand it, defragmentation just refers to a process of taking
files stored in noncontiguous clusters and moving the files around on
the disk until the files' clusters are in order next to each other.
For example, if you had a file which contained three clusters of data,
with the first cluster being at the beginning of the disk, the second
in the middle of the disk, and the third at the end, after defragmentation
the first, second and third clusters would be right next to each other.

With a nearly full volume, you might have to perform several successive
runs of the disk defragmentation software in order to get all the files
defragmented, just because the disk defragmentation software had to have
enough free space available on the disk to temporarily store all the
clusters it was moving around.

Back in the ancient days of DOS, disk defragmentation software for FAT-
formatted disks not only defragmented files but "packed" them as well,
which moved all the files to the beginning of the hard disk so they could
be accessed more quickly.

Later, disk defragmentation software appeared which further "optimized"
the packing by placing the operating system files at the beginning of the
disk for even further speed increases when loading DOS and Windows.

At least, that's how I seem to recall disk defragmentation programs
working under DOS.

Like you, I am very curious to know how much of this still holds true
with modern file systems.

To answer your question, though, I would suspect Executive Software's
Diskeeper 7.0 performs a more thorough disk defragmentation. The
reason being that the disk defragmentation software included within
Microsoft Windows XP is a stripped-down version of Executive Software's
Diskeeper. It works fine, but probably not as good as the version they
can sell for additional money.

Regards,

Aryeh Goretsky

At 07:54 AM 5/1/2003 -0500, you wrote:
>Message: 3
>Date: Thu, 01 May 2003 04:20:36 -0400
>From: John Levanger <levanger@comcast.net>
>To: Thinkpad Forum <thinkpad@stderr.org>
>Subject: [Thinkpad] Windows & H/D Defragging
>
>Is it normal for Windows XP to become heavily fragmented (on the H/D) after
>just a day or two of light use? I'm running Diskeeper 7.0 as my default disk
>defrag utility on my 600X and after just a day or two of web surfing, it
>claims that the disk is heavily fragmented and needs to be defragged. Also,
>do different defrag utilities perform the defrag procedure in different
>ways? Seems Windows wants to put files and directories in differents
>locations on the hard drive than Diskeeper does. Is one better than the
>other? Thanks in advance.
>
>John Levanger
>Savannah, Georgia
>"People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand
>ready to do violence on their behalf."

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Received on Thu May 1 09:33:27 2003