#1 way to defrag a hard drive

[xtknight]

Fragmentation (and the resulting performance degradation) is still a very real issue of NTFS. You're definitely conveying it like it isn't and that the OP shouldn't be "concerned about" it. The OP already knew better I guess...

This provides a good sum-up of it.

http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/file/ntfs/relFrag-c.html

The superior disk management capabilities of NTFS mean that fragmentation is reduced compared to FAT. Unfortunately, this led to a popular myth--that NTFS volumes have no fragmentation, and therefore never need defragmentation. Microsoft unwittingly exacerbated this problem by not providing any utility to defragment NTFS partitions in Windows NT, implying that defragmentation was unnecessary. But this is simply not the case: NTFS partitions definitely are subject to fragmentation. Many users of NTFS have never defragmented their partitions at all, leading to avoidable performance slowdowns over time.

In fact, due to their complexity, NTFS volumes suffer from a variety of different types of fragmentation. Unlike FAT, where a simple cluster allocation system is used, NTFS uses the Master File Table and a combination of resident and non-resident attributes to store files. Due to the flexible way that data is stored, and that additional data storage areas are added as needed, the result can be pieces of data spread out over the volume, particularly when small files grow into large ones. Remember that while NTFS has a much better design than FAT, at its core it does still store data in clusters. The addition and removal of data storage extents causes much of the fragmentation of files and directories. As the MFT grows, it itself can become fragmented, reducing performance further.

Also:

http://www.digit-life.com/articles/ntfs/

It is impossible to say that NTFS prevents file fragmentation. On the contrary it fragments them with pleasure. NTFS fragmentation can surprise any person familiar with file system operation in half a year of work. Therefore it is necessary to launch defragmentation. But here all our problems are not ended, they only start...

I'm done arguing about this. The bottom line is that while NTFS may have less fragmentation than FAT32, it also has different sources of fragmentation. And, these degrade performance, especially in my personal experience. It's far from a rare/"also-ran" issue that should be 90% of the time overlooked. That said I hope we can agree at that, regardless of what each of us claimed.

 

[imported_goku]

Originally posted by: xtknight
Fragmentation (and the resulting performance degradation) is still a very real issue of NTFS. You're definitely conveying it like it isn't and that the OP shouldn't be "concerned about" it. The OP already knew better I guess...

This provides a good sum-up of it.

http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/file/ntfs/relFrag-c.html

The superior disk management capabilities of NTFS mean that fragmentation is reduced compared to FAT. Unfortunately, this led to a popular myth--that NTFS volumes have no fragmentation, and therefore never need defragmentation. Microsoft unwittingly exacerbated this problem by not providing any utility to defragment NTFS partitions in Windows NT, implying that defragmentation was unnecessary. But this is simply not the case: NTFS partitions definitely are subject to fragmentation. Many users of NTFS have never defragmented their partitions at all, leading to avoidable performance slowdowns over time.

In fact, due to their complexity, NTFS volumes suffer from a variety of different types of fragmentation. Unlike FAT, where a simple cluster allocation system is used, NTFS uses the Master File Table and a combination of resident and non-resident attributes to store files. Due to the flexible way that data is stored, and that additional data storage areas are added as needed, the result can be pieces of data spread out over the volume, particularly when small files grow into large ones. Remember that while NTFS has a much better design than FAT, at its core it does still store data in clusters. The addition and removal of data storage extents causes much of the fragmentation of files and directories. As the MFT grows, it itself can become fragmented, reducing performance further.

Also:

http://www.digit-life.com/articles/ntfs/

It is impossible to say that NTFS prevents file fragmentation. On the contrary it fragments them with pleasure. NTFS fragmentation can surprise any person familiar with file system operation in half a year of work. Therefore it is necessary to launch defragmentation. But here all our problems are not ended, they only start...

I'm done arguing about this. The bottom line is that while NTFS may have less fragmentation than FAT32, it also has different sources of fragmentation. And, these degrade performance, especially in my personal experience. It's far from a rare/"also-ran" issue that should be 90% of the time overlooked. That said I hope we can agree at that, regardless of what each of us claimed.

Couldn't be put better.