On Sun, 04 Nov 2018 10:50:51 -0600, Char Jackson
wrote:

[snip]

**I'm trying to think of an example. Perhaps a container of some kind,
such as an encrypted volume or something that holds a virtual disk? I'm
struggling to think of an example where a file actually needs to be laid
out contiguously. Even the Windows pagefile doesn't care where it lands
on disk.

IIRC (and I might not), the pagefile USED TO have to be
contiguous. I have used non-Windows systems where one could specify
that a file be contiguous; I do not know why it was ever needed
though.

Bottom line, if someone is trying to free up disk space, the defragger
is the wrong tool for the job.

One possibility would be if a directory spanned more than one
cluster but had had files deleted from it such that fewer clusters
could hold all of the file entries. This is an extreme case hardly
worth worrying about.

I have never been able to detect any time difference between
before and after defragging so I no longer bother.

Sincerely,

Gene Wirchenko