http://www.maximumpc.com | JUN 08 | MAXIMUMPC |*,
I
n a perfect world, the data
on your hard drive would
line up on the platters like
little soldiers, all in perfect
rows and grouped by class,
frequency of use, and size. But
modern-day Windows oper-
ating systems don’t behave
in such a way, leading to
data fragmentation—and, by
necessity, the rise of defrag-
mentation routines.As for how this happens,
we’ll off er a simplifi ed version
of a typical fi le-system archi-
tecture. Envision a blank drive.
When an operating system
writes a series of fi les to the
drive, it might place them in
sequential order—say, fi ve dif-
ferent chunks of data lined up
one aft er the other with each
chunk taking up 20 blocks of
space. Removing one of the
fi les creates a hole that the
operating system can then fi ll
either completely or partially
with new information.Now suppose the new fi le
needs to get bigger. Since the
existing data takes up space
immediately following the fi le
that needs to grow, the operat-
ing system is forced to con-
tinue the fi le elsewhere on the
drive. Take the large number of
fi les on a typical hard drive and
the massive number of writes
and deletions that happen con-
stantly and you get a perfect
storm of fi le fragmentation.Fragmentation forces the
drive head to jump all over the
place to fi nd the bits and pieces
of fi les whenever you access
them. Defragmentation, then, is
the means by which these fi les
are realigned into contiguous
chunks. Windows Vista does
this automatically, only the
slow speed at which it defrags
makes us wonder: Is the time
spent worth the supposed per-
formance payoff? And do third-
party defragmenters, free or
otherwise, do a better job?How does Vista’s built-in defrag tool compare
to third-party solutions? 7Y 96K>9 BJGPHY
THE DISK DEFRAG DIFFER ENCE
HAND MODEL: ALDO PHOTOGRAPHY BY MARK MADEO