Defragmentation question.

[Bluefront]

On an XP Pro install, there seems to be large differences between various defrag progs. The included XP prog which is a Diskeeper version, finds a big difference compared to the real Diskeeper program (ver 8.0). After a defrag using the XP prog, running any other defrag program shows a completely fragmented drive.

What's going on here? Seems to me a fragmented file should be recognized as such by any defrag program. Is there an optimal program for a drive defragmentation?

 

[corkyg]

One may be doing simple defragging and the other complete optimization with defragging. They are quite different.

 

[Nothinman]

How do you describe a fragmented drive? Is it how much free space is fragmented? Is it how much file data is fragmented? Each defrag tool has their own algorithm for generating those numbers so there's no way you'll get them all to agree that a drive is in good shape.

Generally it's irrelevant anyway, 99% of the time drive accesses are in small random chunks as parts are paged in anyway so the contiguity of the files being accessed isn't important. There are extreme cases where fragmentation will hurt (and if you're working with really large audio or video files you'll want them to be contiguous) but most of the time you won't notice any difference.

 

[episodic]

More information in my sig

 

[tiap]

Originally posted by: corkyg
One may be doing simple defragging and the other complete optimization with defragging. They are quite different.

That is the biggest reason.
Be aware also, that the full version, if you use boot time defrag, will defrag and move the pagefile and mft, if necessary, which the xp version does not.
This can result in quite a difference as well.

 

[alimoalem]

Originally posted by: episodic
More information in my sig

go to his sig...it has everything you'll ever need answered