Why is defragmentation unnecessary?

Windows 98, Windows Me and Windows XP come with a collection of house cleaning tools, including ScanDisk, Disk Defragmenter and Disk Cleanup, to help keep your disk in peak working order.

Why should you bother with the housework? A couple of reasons. First, disks are hard working, mechanical devices and, like all mechanical devices, prone to failure. A little preventative maintenance can warn you of potential problems and fix minor glitches before they can do damage to your data.

Second, the way files are organised on your drive has a perceptible impact on the performance of your computer. If your files are stored neatly, end-to-end, without fragmentation, reading and writing to the disk is speedier.

What is file fragmentation?

Sometimes when you install a program or create a data file, the file ends up chopped up into chunks and stored in multiple locations on the disk. This is called fragmentation.

What makes this happen?

When you first...

Tips for Using the Windows Defragmentation Tool

Windows has a built-in defragmentation utility. You’ll find it by opening your Start menu, going to Programs, selecting Accessories and then choosing from the System Tools. (The defragmentation utility is also an option if you run the disk clean-up service by right-clicking on your drive in Windows Explorer and selecting Properties.)

When the utility runs, you can choose either Analyze (which will check whether your drive needs defragmenting) or simply start the defragmentation right away.

While your computer is defragmenting, you’ll see a map of your disk drive showing how it’s rearranging the files. The main things it does are moving all the file indexes and directory...

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At first glance, most experts will state that SSDs do not need to be defragged. Mike Karp, Systems Management News storage columnist, pointed out that there are two kinds of SSD and that defragmenting either is not needed.

“There is no conceivable reason to defragment either. SSDs based on RAM will not be adversely affected by defragging unless your concept of defragging involves the use of a hammer,” said Karp. “Flash-based SSDs are all also unlikely to be harmed, but there is a caveat: Because the lifetime of flash memory is typically limited by the total number of writes the memory can accept, and because defragging actually does a rewrite in the process of making data contiguous, a defragmenting procedure will shorten the life of the flash memory by lessening the number of writes that the chip can accept.”

While Karp is not alone in his view of defragging’s usefulness in SSDs, there are those who think otherwise. Most notable among the supporters of defragging SSD...

Defragmenting your Windows computer is a cinch. You don't need to be a techie or spend frustrating hours learning this useful tool. And after you've done it once, you can schedule automatic defragmentation and never give it a second thought.

What is defragmentation, and why is it so important?

Imagine that every time you put a new item on your office desk, you toss it down any old way. When you need to find something, you just shuffle things around until you find what you’re looking for. No problem! Sure, not at first. But after a few months of this, as more and more clutter is piled onto your desk, it becomes very difficult to find anything. Your tape dispenser gets separated from your tape, important tax documents are mingled in with holiday cards, and old bank statements are taking up space. The solution? A place for everything, and everything in its place!

Your computer is similar to a real world office desk. It too gets cluttered, and it too can be...

defragmentation in FreeBSD 4.11 Freminlins freminlins at gmail.com
Thu Jul 28 16:41:59 GMT 2005 On 7/28/05, Bob Johnson wrote: > > Why is it unnecessary to defragment UFS? > > > > In normal use, files never become fragmented enough to affect performance. In > a (loose) sense, files are intentionally fragmented in a controlled way so > that fragmentation doesn't cause problems. If you run fsck on a partition, > you will typically see fragmentation levels of less than one percent. > > Also, keep in mind that in the default formatting, a FreeBSD partition has 8% > of the disk space withheld from normal users to help keep the disk from > becoming so full the system can't operate, and it has the side effect of > helping to prevent fragmentation as well. It is why df can show a disk being > as much as 108% full. It is possible to make this space available for normal > use if, for example, you are using a partition only for data storage and you > want to squeeze every last...

There is a common myth that Linux disks never need defragmentation at all. In most cases, this is true, due mostly to the excellent journaling filesystems Linux uses (ext2, 3, 4, btrfs, etc.) to handle the filesystem. However, in some specific cases, fragmentation might still occur. If that happens to you, the solution is fortunately very simple.

Fragmentation occurs when a file system updates files in little chunks, but these chunks do not form a contiguous whole and are scattered around the disk instead. This is particularly true for FAT and FAT32 filesystems. It was somewhat mitigated in NTFS and almost never happens in Linux (extX). Here is why.

In filesystems such as FAT and FAT32, files are written right next to each other on the disk. There is no room left for file growth or updates:

The NTFS leaves somewhat more room between the files, so there is room to grow. As the space between chunks is limited, fragmentation will still occur over...

Disk Defragmenter Software Review

What is Disk Defragmentation Software?

The files in your computer work just like the paper documents you keep at home. For instance, if you store all of your tax records in clearly marked files within a single cabinet, you can quickly and easily locate information. However, suppose some of your documents were to get separated from the rest; it can be a much longer and more frustrating process to find what you need.

Within your computer's hard drive, that kind of separation is called fragmentation, and it's what causes your computer to slow down over time. Disk defragmentation software applications, or defragmenters, act like professional organizers. They sort your digital files, so your computer doesn't have to work as hard to find it. Read on to find out more, and check out our learning center articles on disk defragmentation software.

How Does a Disk Defragmenter Work?

Disk fragmentation occurs at...

Defrags can be a pain in the neck! You have to find a time when your computer is on, but you aren’t using it; sometimes you have to free up disk space to be able to defragment, which means you need to save files to a removable drive. However, computer experts wouldn’t persist telling you that it needs to be done if it wasn't so. In this article we are going to explain why it's really important to defragment your hard drive and how often you should defrag to keep your files in order and not to damage your hard drive at the same time. Defragmenting your hard drives will also help you speed up computer performance.

What does defragging do?

To us, human beings, a file is something whole – a photo, a document, a song, or any other file. We would never-ever think of a file as of tiny little bits of information scattered all over the drive. But Windows thinks differently – to Windows a file is lots of small fragments that are kept in clusters on a hard drive. Windows knows...

What is defragmentation and why do I need it?

Defragmentation is like cleaning house for your PC, it picks up all of the pieces of data that are spread across your hard drive and puts them back together again. Why is defragmentation important? Because every computer suffers from the constant growth of fragmentation and if you don’t clean house, your PC suffers.

Disk fragmentation occurs when a file is broken up into pieces to fit on the disk. Because files are constantly being written, deleted and resized, fragmentation is a natural occurrence. When a file is spread out over several locations, it takes longer to read and write. But the effects of fragmentation are far more widespread: Slow PC performance, long boot-times, random crashes and freeze-ups – even a complete inability to boot up at all. Many users blame these problems on the operating system or simply think their computer is “old”, when hard disk fragmentation is most often the real...

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Disk defragmentation used to be surrounded in mystery with advice being to never touch your computer mouse while defrag is running, doing it in Safe Mode and bracing yourself for the possibility of data loss from occasional power failure. Many people still fear defragmentation or simply try not to think about it because of the old advice still coming up in internet searches. In this article I will try to explain disk defragmentation and all related notions in simple terms to eliminate every fear or myth associated with it.

To understand what disk defragmentation is, one first needs to understand how a hard disk operates, what a file system is and how fragmentation really happens. These may sound like very technical terms, but the notions are in reality quite easy to comprehend with a little explaining and some illustrations. Let’s look at them here.

How Your HDD Works

Your HDD (hard disk drive) is the slowest part of your computer, because it...

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If you want in one command and not use Software source ticking then in terminal put:

sudo add-apt-repository universe

On older versions of Ubuntu, you might have to use a full source line:

sudo add-apt-repository "deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu $(lsb_release -sc) universe"

To enable all Ubuntu software (main universe restricted multiverse) repositories use

sudo add-apt-repository "deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu $(lsb_release -sc) main universe restricted multiverse"

you can add also partner repository with different link (see difference is ubuntu to canonical)

sudo add-apt-repository "deb http://archive.canonical.com/ubuntu $(lsb_release -sc) partner"

Then update the package list:

sudo apt-get update

p.s.

$(lsb_release -sc) checks your Ubuntu version and puts its name in the source link. Since 12.04 is called precise, you can test in a terminal that lsb_release -sc gives precise. That adds the precise name of your Ubuntu release...

5 reasons why your computer is slow
Many computer users are wondering the same question: "why is my computer getting slower and slower?" The truth is it depends most on you, the user. The better you keep your computer maintained, the faster your PC could be.
What should be maintained and how? Let us proceed to find out the 5 ultimate reasons that slow down your computer and the respective solutions.

1. Clustered registry

Your Windows registry keeps growing while you use your computer. It continuously records all the information and changes of software, hardware and system settings. Over time, your registry will be accumulated with a large number of obsolete, redundant and invalid entries and registry holes, which can seriously affect your PC performance.
To clean and optimize your registry, you can download WinASO Registry Optimizer and simply run the...

Windows is notorious for having useless features and CPU resource hogging programs/services enabled by default. Today’s post is about removing some of the useless services. Services are kind of like startup programs, they are usually not necessary, they slow down your computer, and they slow down the boot up process; however, some are useful so thats why I have made a list of ones to get rid of.0 To turn off services in windows you go to Start > Run > Type: ‘services.msc’ > Double Click on the service you want to alter and change the startup type to disabled or manual as directed in the list of unnecessary services below.

AdobeLM Service: Not all computers have this service, still it is useless, just disable it if you have it.

Alerter: Disable this one if you are not on a network because you don’t need to receive alerts.

Application Management: Set this to manual.

Automatic Updates: Disable it if you don’t require auto updating and patching of...

Dear Lifehacker,
I hear people talk about "defragging" their computers all the time as a way to make it faster, but I'm not really sure what that means. What does defragging do and is it something I need to do to my computer? How often?

Sincerely,
Defragging Dude

Dear Defragging,
"Defrag" is short for "defragment," which is a maintenance task required by your hard drives.

Most hard drives have spinning platters, with data stored in different places around that platter. When your computer writes data to your drive, it does so in "blocks" that are ordered sequentially from one side of the drive's platter to the other. Fragmentation happens when those files get split between blocks that are far away from each other. The hard drive then takes longer to read that file because the read head has to "visit" multiple spots on the platter. Defragmentation puts those blocks back in sequential order, so your drive head doesn't have to run around the entire...