lovelt19 said:
What does "formatted NTFS" mean?
and I'm totally lost at this explanation: "There is no detectable
efficiency difference between a moderately fragmented NTFS volume and
a pristine one". Can you please explain?
Sure.
NTFS New Technology File System.
It first came into use (I think) with Windows NT in 1993.
Open My Computer, right-click on your drive, pick "Properties" Under the
"General Tab" you'll see an entry called "File System." The other
possibilities are FAT16 (rare) and FAT32. These stand for File Allocation
Table and File Allocation Table 32-bit. The latter has a greater ability to
handle larger drives, but even it has a practical limit.
If you do not have an NTFS system, there are means to convert other
renditions TO NTFS.
NTFS is superior to FAT32 in many respects in addition to the fragmentation
issue. It can handle drive capacities up to 256 terabytes, can compress
files to save space, has built-in optional encryption and password
protection, has self-healing capability, and more. It's swell.
Regarding the fragmentation issue, NTFS's predecessors were quite stupid. In
the directory there was a file name and a list of all the segments making up
the file, so there was all this thrashing as the file system gathered the
pieces as needed. In NTFS, the files on the disk are stored as a relational
database and the file system pre-fetches the bits it needs. Very much
faster.