Re: [nukkad] Computer query

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"Dr. M.C.Gupta" wrote:
> 
> 
> In any case, what is fragmentation and defragmentation?
> 

You start writing files on a disc, it writes sequentially. one full file
is written in adjacent blocks, then another, then other. it is without
fragmented.

But then you delete some files, creating a void in between files. When
you write next file, it first writes to this void, and if the file is
longer, it will keep on writing it on every next void it finds. Thus a
single long file might get written in five or six different non-adjacent
areas. It is fragmented. 

At the evnd of every such void where the file was written, it writes the
address of next void where the file starts. Thus, it takes theoretically
longer to read a fragmented file as it has to read that next address and
reach there.

In case one part of hard disc gets corrupted, if there are a lot of
fragmented files written in this block, all will be untraceable, as the
part of file written in this area will be illegible, as well as the
address of next block written there will get corrupted. If it is a
non-fragmented file, there is a possiblity that less nos. of files are
written in this area, thus less data is lost.

Sometimes, windows will delete a fragmented file, but somehow fail to
record that such and such areas have been made void. Thus you might get
some such areas released while defragmenting (or is that scandisk?).

It is a good practice to do scandisk and defragmentation once a week.
empty cookies, temp folders, recycled bins, etc before doing
defragmentation.

close all background programmes before running scandisk or defrag.
systray should be empty. otherwise it will restart every time something
is written to harddisk.

norton defrag is much better than windows one as it writes most
frequently used files at the end of the disk and less frequently
used/modified files at the start of disk. Once you install something,
its programe files (system) remain unchanged whereas data part changes.
when these are written in different areas, next time, only data area
needs to be defrag.

-Rawat


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