Defragmentation

Defragmentation Explained:


Fragmentation iscaused by creating and deleting files and folders, installing newsoftware, and downloading files from the Internet. Computers do notnecessarily save an entire file or folder in a single space on a disk;they're saved in the first available space. After a large portion of adisk has been used, most of the subsequent files and folders are savedin pieces across the volume.
When youdelete files or folders, the empty spaces left behind are filled inrandomly as you store new ones. This is how fragmentation occurs. Themore fragmented the volume is, the slower the computer's file input andoutput performance will be.
Defragmentation is the process ofrewriting non-contiguous parts of a file to contiguous sectors on adisk for the purpose of increasing data access and retrieval speeds.Because FAT and NTFS disks can deteriorate and become badly fragmentedover time, defragmentation is vital for optimal system performance.
InJune 1999 the ABR Corporation of Irvine, California, performed afragmentation analysis and found that, out of 100 corporate officesthat were not using a defragmenter, 50 percent of the respondents hadserver files with 2,000 to 10,000 fragments. In all cases the resultswere the same: Servers and workstations experienced a significantdegradation in performance.




Why Defragment Disks?

Harddisks are by far the slowest component in your computer. CPU and memorywork much faster than hard disks because they do not have moving parts.Therefore fragmented disks often become a bottleneck of the systemperformance.
Besides causing slowdowns, fragmentation makes thedisk drive heads move too much when reading files which leads tofreeze-ups and system crashes. It is important to keep your disksdefragmented and optimized as much as possible.