defrag

[Spax]

What is defragmentation exactly, is it useful to do? A friend told me that it took him hours to defrag his drive and I was wondering if there is a program that does it faster (but equally efficient). Maybe Norton Defrag?

[hertz]

As data is saved to a drive and other data deleted, spaces occur. As the computer saves further data it tries to put it in the first available space. However this space may not be big enough, so it splits it between this first space and the next available one. This process goes on so that an item of data could be split over many areas of the hard drive. Details of the locations where an item of data is stored is kept in a master record that the computer uses to find this data. It takes longer and longer to access the information as the drive heads have to skip over large areas of the drive to find it. Defragmentation is carried out to rearrange and recombine the bits of data. This usually has the effect of speeding up the computer's operation. Depending upon how fragmented the drive has become and how powerful the computer is governs how long the operation can take. Windows' built-in defragger can take many hours, wheras Norton's works much quicker.

[DuzyEverwork]

Well Hertz, if Spax doesn't give your answer a rating, I'd like to - I have often wondered what I was doing when I watched those little boxes belting up and down the rows now I know!! * * * *

[Spax]

Thanx hertz!!!

[hertz]

Another point worth mentioning whilst defragging - make sure any programs running in the background are switched off, including screensaver. Many people find that the defrag process keeps stopping and restarting due to background programs altering the layout of the data on the disk. It may be necessary to boot up in Safe mode to complete defragging.

[BadBob]

A defrag isn't that important anymore. hertz answer is an excellent explanation of whats going on but more recent operating systems do things differently now. Back with windows 95 a defrag was an important operation as the fragmentation of files was common but with the current operating systems it does this in its daily running i.e. rather than spliting files it looks for gaps big enough in the first place. Thats not to say some files do not get fragmented but not to the extent that they did previously. Another consideration is that Computers are so much faster than say in 95 the speed increase after a defrag is negligible.