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    Defragging

    Discussion in 'Hardware Components and Aftermarket Upgrades' started by fred2028, Dec 24, 2008.

  1. fred2028

    fred2028 Sexy member

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    When defragging a drive, what's the benefit of moving large files to the end of the drive?
     
    fred2028, Dec 24, 2008
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  2. lixuelai

    lixuelai Notebook Virtuoso NBR Reviewer

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    Id guess lower seek time towards the outer parts of the platter. Lower seek is good for smaller files.
     
    lixuelai, Dec 24, 2008
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  3. ahl395

    ahl395 Ahlball

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    Well, a fragmented drive has all the data files of one program scattered across the drive. The HDD has to go find the scattered files. If it defragments all the files to one location, it doesnt have to search for them. Which makes it faster.

    At least thats how it was explained to me...
     
    ahl395, Dec 24, 2008
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  4. fred2028

    fred2028 Sexy member

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    That's defragging in general. Even if I don't move all large files to the end of the drive, it still puts all of the same files together.

    And as for the previous replier, what if I partitioned my HDD? Does it divide my drive into sections by concentric circles or as if it was a pie?
     
    fred2028, Dec 24, 2008
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  5. Noterev

    Noterev Notebook Consultant

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    It's never like a pie slice.

    If your partition has room to breath you'll see sections.

    Here's the wiki.

    1. Moving all the index or directory information to one spot. Moving this spot into the center of the data, i.e. one third of the way in, so that average head travel to data is halved compared to having directory information at the front.
    2. Moving infrequently used files further from the directory area.
    3. Obeying a user provided table of file descriptions to emphasize or ignore.
    4. Making files contiguous so that they can be read without unnecessary seeking.
     
    Noterev, Dec 24, 2008
    #5