Let me emphasise, again, that I am totally in favour of defragging. There is no doubt, in my mind, that, with consideration of circumstances, Defragmenation will certainly improve the performance of you hard disk and, subsequently, the computer operation. However, many of the \"thesis\" which support this idea, are based on original, and now outdated, information.
For example, the second link in Kemicals post refers to the XP defrag process. The methods employed today have changed beyond recognition.
Fwiw. busydosg,s link is based on an original white paper written in 2005.
Unfortunately, with the vastness of the Internet today, as many items can be found supporting a view, as those opposing it.
A lot can depend on the program you are using.
Quoting from Kemical \" don't think the 'tightness' of the files is an issue here but putting them back into some order is.. That's the whole point of Defragging a disk.\"
Very true, but they also create contiguous empty space, which also has its impotance.
Some of the cheaper defrag programs merely compact the data. This does not create more space, but I guess it does make the spare space available in one empty sector. It may, because of the compacting, speed up the processes a little, but as it does not reorder the files in continuity, does not do a lot for hard disk wear. The better programs, of course, do try and put everything back as it should be so that, for example, all data etc associated with Acrobat, would be again within the same disk area and make things easier for the hard disk head. But, the downside is that, whilst doing this, it is also thrashing the hard disk considerably. Right or wrong, Microsoft have now avoided this to a large extent, by only allowing their own defrag progam to deal with fragmented files, which are only over a certain size.
Oddly, one of the biggest offenders is Microsoft's install procedure itself. It caches the install files in folders such as \"MsConfig\" etc. The natural instinct is to delete these folders during routine cleaning of your computer. This leaves a useful gap for any subsequent files to plant themselves, and so rapidly leads into even more fragmetation!
I would suggest though, that with todays average installed RAM (usually a lot more than we had in the old XP days) and the use of virtual memory, when working, not so much fragmetation occurs. I honestly feel that, in this instance, Microsoft have got it right.
This was their original blog, published shortly before the release of 7.It makes informative reading.
Engineering Windows 7 : Disk Defragmentation ? Background and Engineering the Windows 7 Improvements
A good post RAK and very interesting indeed .
