L
Leythos
"David Candy" <.> said:See you are wrong, again.
Files are cached. Caching makes fragmentation irrelevent. So that leaves files read for the first time. Your OS files will be probably unfragmented after install. That leaves data files. How many data files does one read at a time. I only load one word doc at a time. Even if it's in a thousand pieces it will still load faster than I can react.
Fragmentation causes a delay in filling the cache with the file
information. It's really a simple thing - if the head has to move to a
non sequential sector to get the next part of the file, there is a delay
in filling the cache. Where you see this impact users is in large files
or a heavily file fragmented drive.
Now a file copy of lots of fragmented files will take a while longer. Big deal, how often does one do that. The first application startup and system startup will take longer, but prefetch reduces the effect of this. It may not be measurable.
If file copy takes longer, so does the read of a fragmented file. You
should consider that there are two types of fragmentation:
1) File fragmentation
2) Free Space fragmentation
Both impact performance, File impacts reads, Free Space impacts
writes/growth.
Many drives only have a 2MB cache, some have 8MB, others are up to 16MB,
but most of the home users computers are using 2 or 8MB caches. Many
files are much larger than 2MB or 8MB and a delay in filling the cache
will impact performance.
Defragging a floppy only system pays good dividends, especially if smartdrv isn't being used. But as computers get faster and faster it doesn't matter.
If you defrag a floppy and see benefit, it's only because the head
movement takes longer on a fragmented floppy than it does on a hard
drive - so, while you may not measure it on a typical users computer,
the same applies - if the heads move to non-sequential sectors without
reading, in order to fetch data, there is a read-delay.
I use perfect disk. I do it from habit and because I like tidy computers.
Tidy, when talking about fragmentation, means performance, even if you
personally can't measure it.
The real issue is this:
1) Does defragmentation File/Space improve performance of a file system?
Ans: Yes, no question, it will improve performance without question.
2) What considerations are there for seeing the benefit to home users?
Ans: Many typical home users with large drives that remain mostly empty
will not notice any significant difference. Users with heavily used
drives with masses of data should be able to measure the difference
without guessing.
In this day, when many home users are editing photos, video, downloading
full DVD movies, etc... the amount of fragmentation is increasing, and
that means that drive performance suffers.
While defragging is free with all the versions of Windows, there are
significant differences in what Windows Defrag offers and what 3rd-party
defraggers offer.