Disk fragmenting-->

[reddog4629]

Why does windows fragment files?

[jadison]

well,
whenever you or windows installs files onto your hardrive, it doesn't get done neatly, and clusters of information aren't stacked precisely on top of one another.

Over time your hardrive contains information that is clutterd all over, from beginning, middle, and end.

That's why running Defragmenter keeps ur system speedy and efficient when accessing files or programs.

-=jd=-

[NDC]

When Windows retrieves a file and writes back to disk after closing the file or application, it will write back to any free sector. That is why hard disks begin to frag up...

[Axel]

Most people don't know how to shut down everything running on their computer before they start installing new stuff. Also - they do other things on their computer while they are installing a program -

The different interrupts different things run on in the computer allow different programs to access the hard drive over time.

So - that is why most programs setup wizards tell you to shut everything else down before you install their program.

Say you are installing a program and browsing the internet at the same time, for example - the internet is constantly pumping more temporary internet image files onto the hard drive to display what you are seeing on the net. At the same time, the setup of the program you are installing is writing files to the hard drive. They don't both work at the same time, but "take turns" based on their interrupts - so the program you are installing is getting mixed in with temporary internet files. You stop browsing and shut down your computer for the night - the system then automatically removes the temporary internet files ( depending on your browser settings) - and suddenly the program you installed at the same time has all of the spaces and gaps in it on the hard drive. The program is intact because at the end of the install program's "turn" it would remember where it left off and place a pointer to the next part of the file...... and so on......

That's an extremely basic description of what's going on - but that's one of the reasons, if you ever watch a defrag, you'll see all sorts of holes in the picture of the hard drive the system is trying to clean up. And, sometimes, you will see the defragmenter take green blocks from more than one location of the screen and write them all together on another part of the hard drive.

The system also needs space for the "swap file" - kind of like a notepad where it does system work that it canot fit into the RAM on the machine. It will use available space on the hard drive. If a hard drive is very full, then the system has to use all of the blank spaces on the hard drive and it slows down. Defraging a system and moving all of those spaces to one location on the drive usually speeds things up.

A few helpful tips on defraging - through the control panel add/remove programs applet - uninstall any unwanted programs - then open up you internet explorer go to either "view" or "tools" - then to internet options - then to delete temporary files. - then go to windows explorer and go to the c:\temp folder and clean it up - and then to the c:\windows\temp folder and clean that up - remember to empty the recycle bin - The it's time to do a scandisk and defrag on your system... this will give you the best results on windows 3x , 9x ,and ME systems. NT 3.51 and 4.0 are a bit different and windows 2000 has it's own set of defrag tools.