defragmenting

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R & J Westney

What are the major culprits that cause fragmentation in a drive and can
these files be allocated to their own partition? I'm thinking particularly
of image files in Photoshop and other image processing apps and temp
internet files.

I've decided to use 'C' for both the OS and apps and will have a separate
partition for data files. I had separate partitons for the OS and apps in
my experimental setup but found 100's of pieces of apps still ended up in
'C'. There seemed little point in keeping them in separate partitions - or
am I missing something??

On the other hand, if particular processes cause fragmentation and if these
can be isolated to a separate partition, that does seem to make sense. I've
read that a page file is one such candidate. If so, where is it, should it
be moved and, if so, where to? What other parts of the OS or apps cause
fragmnetation and can any of these sensibly be moved to a partition that
can then be more regularly partitioned than the others?

RoS
 
R & J Westney said:
What are the major culprits that cause fragmentation in a drive and can
these files be allocated to their own partition? I'm thinking
particularly of image files in Photoshop and other image processing apps
and temp internet files.

I've decided to use 'C' for both the OS and apps and will have a separate
partition for data files. I had separate partitons for the OS and apps in
my experimental setup but found 100's of pieces of apps still ended up in
'C'. There seemed little point in keeping them in separate partitions - or
am I missing something??

On the other hand, if particular processes cause fragmentation and if
these can be isolated to a separate partition, that does seem to make
sense. I've read that a page file is one such candidate. If so, where is
it, should it be moved and, if so, where to? What other parts of the OS
or apps cause fragmnetation and can any of these sensibly be moved to a
partition that can then be more regularly partitioned than the others?

RoS
Click to expand...
AFIK the common cause of fragmentation is the saving of and deleting of
files. You save a small file, and later delete it, and then you save a
larger file. The larger file will save to where the small file was at, and
then it will go to the next open spot on your HD and save the rest of the
file. Some times it may save a large file to 3 more places. Thus you have a
fragmented file. Over a period of time of saving and deleting you have a
large number of fragmentations. Even if the files or on separate
partitions, they will still become fragmented. I wouldn't advise to start
moving files, unless you know what you are doing. You could move a system
file, and goof up your computer. Best to run a disk defragmenter program.
How often depends on how often you save and delete files.

Cajunswabbie
 
Why volumes become fragmented
http://www.microsoft.com/resources/...all/proddocs/en-us/defrag_why_fragmented.mspx

All you have to do is open a Word doc, do nothing else and close it; it's
fragmented.

You have very few choices.

You can never boot your machine, that way nothing will get fragmented.

You can purchase PerfectDisk.
http://www.raxco.com/products/perfectdisk2k/

PerfectDisk can consolidate free space which makes it take longer for files
to fragment. If sufficient contiguous free space is not available any file
just created is created already fragmented.

Everything you wanted to know about the page file...
Virtual Memory in Windows XP
by Alex Nichol
(MS-MVP - Windows Storage Management/File Systems)
http://www.aumha.org/win5/a/xpvm.htm

--
Hope this helps. Let us know.

Wes
MS-MVP Windows Shell/User

In
 
Hi!
It sounds as if there's little benefit in having more than two partitions on
a single physivcal drive, one for the OS and apps, the other for data? I
just had notions of being able to keep everything as defragmented as
possible by segregating the worst offenders into separate partitions. Too
easy!
RoS
 
Hi!
It sounds as if there's little benefit in having more than two partitions on
a single physivcal drive, one for the OS and apps, the other for data? I
just had notions of being able to keep everything as defragmented as
possible by segregating the worst offenders into separate partitions. Too
easy!
RoS
Click to expand...

Some people swear by partitions, others swear at them.

From what I can understand, partitioning comes in handy if you're
switching between more than one OS.
 
You can't avoid fragmentation. Schedule a defrag utility to run weekly if
you feel a great need to.
 
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