Xp Defrag

[Dave Hannam]

Why is it that when yo defrag drives that all of the blue Contiguous files
do not move to the left and leave white Free space in between and also
sometimes red Fragmented files stay at the beginning. I would have thought
that there should be no free space and it should be all compressed to the
left.
Thanks, in advance, Dave.

[Nicholas]

Diskeeper Frequently Asked Questions

Have you ever wondered "Why doesn't Diskeeper result in a fragmentation display showing all the files in one place and all the spaces consolidation into another place?" Or, maybe you've asked yourself "Why does Diskeeper say my disk does not need to be defragmented when I can see from the display that the files are scattered all over the disk?"

The answer to both these questions is found in the fact that our primary concern with Diskeeper is the performance of your computer. The disk drives are the primary bottleneck in your computer's performance. Diskeeper restores the disks to top speed by eliminating fragmentation.

It is a common misconception that a defragmented disk should look very neat and tidy in the analysis screen, with solid blue bars all the way across the screen (representing fragmentation-free files) and the rest white space (representing consolidated space).

Clearly, the speed of the disk, meaning how fast you can access the data on it, is more important than the prettiness of the display or the consolidation of all the free space into one place. Free space consolidation might be important if you have to create one gigantic contiguous file, but it has no effect on performance. So Diskeeper uses algorithms that achieve the highest speed from your drive regardless of the arrangement of the free spaces on the drive and on the screen. And it does so without wasting time on excessive consolidation of free space. We simply go for the fastest possible file access times and then stop.

Even so, you might ask why we don't continue and rearrange the files further to get a neat display? The answer is, "Because it takes computer power to do so." We long ago decided that it would be wrong to consume more of your computer's performance than we give back. So Diskeeper defragments until the disk is in top shape PERFORMANCE-wise and then stops. Any further work is a waste of your computer resources.

Now this might not be a big deal if you like to watch the display as Diskeeper defragments your drive, but it is a very big deal to people who depend on their computers for their work. They need all the performance they can get and can't hold up production while the defragmenter pretties up the disk. This is why Diskeeper is designed to run in the background at the lowest possible priority, giving way to any other program that needs to run. And it is also why Diskeeper STOPS defragmenting when maximum performance has been achieved.


--
Nicholas

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"Dave Hannam" > wrote in message:
...

| Why is it that when yo defrag drives that all of the blue Contiguous files
| do not move to the left and leave white Free space in between and also
| sometimes red Fragmented files stay at the beginning. I would have thought
| that there should be no free space and it should be all compressed to the
| left.
| Thanks, in advance, Dave.
|
|

[Greg Hayes/Raxco Software]

Dave,

The built-in defragmenter really isn't designed to do a good job of
consolidating free space.

- Greg/Raxco Software
Microsoft MVP - Windows Storage Management/File System

Disclaimer: I work for Raxco Software, the maker of PerfectDisk - a
commercial defrag utility, as a systems engineer in the support department.


"Dave Hannam" > wrote in message
...
> Why is it that when yo defrag drives that all of the blue Contiguous files
> do not move to the left and leave white Free space in between and also
> sometimes red Fragmented files stay at the beginning. I would have thought
> that there should be no free space and it should be all compressed to the
> left.
> Thanks, in advance, Dave.
>
>