A process used to rearrange file storage on a disk so that files are not scattered across the surface of the disk Defragmented files load more efficiently
The act of Defragmenting files stored on your computers Hard Drive Defrag, short for "Defragmentation" i e Fragmented files
as you add and delete files on your hard drive the individual files end up being stored in a large number of fragments wherever there is free space on the drive This slows down the process of reading the file To resolve this we need to defragment the drive
When you use the same file over and over again, writing, rewriting, saving, and deleting parts of it on the same disk, the file becomes fragmented That means that although you can't tell, your operating system is storing all the data from that file as separate packages of information, distributed on different parts of the disk Although fragmentation does not lose the information contained in the file, it does eventually slow down access to the file itself, because the OS must search the whole disk to create the sum of the file's parts Defragmentation collects all those parts into one stream of data again, speeding up your system
defragment defragmentation The process of rewriting a file to adjacent sections of a hard disk Meaning: Over time, parts of the same file can become fragmented--that is, spread over different areas on a hard disk Fragmented files causes slower disk speed and can contribute to crashes Windows 95/98 includes the Disk Defragmenter, which may help improve disk performance See also file allocation table
A procedure in which all the files on a hard disk are rewritten on the disk so that all parts of each file reside in contiguous clusters The result is an improvement of up to 75 percent of the disk's speed during retrieval operations
(External) DEFRAG [d: ] [/F][/S[: ]order] [/B][/skiphigh [/LCD|/BW|/GO] [/H] DEFRAG [d: ] [/V][/B][/skiphigh] [/LCD]|/BW|/GO] [/H] Optimizes disk performance by reorganizing the files on the disk
reunite files that were stored on various areas of a disk into one continuous file
When a file is too large to store in a single location on a hard disk, it is stored on the disk in discontiguous (not adjacent) parts or fragments This fragmentation is "invisible" to the user; however The locations of the fragments are kept track of by the system Over time, disk access time can be slowed by fragmentation since each fragmented file is likely to require multiple drive head repositionings and accesses (There's nothing you can do to prevent fragmentation, by the way ) A disk defragmenter is a utility that rearranges your fragmented files and the free space on your computer so that files are stored in contiguous units and free space is consolidated in one contiguous block This also improves access time to files that are now contiguous