clarification regarding defragmentation.

[maharjun]

The doubt which i currently have is regarding the functioning of defragmenting software. i.e. when you defragment a disk. does a defragmenter defragment only files or also folders.

e.g. lets say i have a directory "folder\"

in it are some 200 files. if i run the defragmenter then each of the 200 files become contiguous. but if the 1st file is located at one end of the hard disk and the 2nd on an aother end, then defragmenting has not offered me any significant benifit.(lets assume that i had to access every file in the folder, e.g. during the time of application startup). so i wanted to know if the defragmenter, along with defragmenting the files, also brings the files in a folder together in a contiguous arrangement(i.e. defragments the folders as well).

i have the following 2 defragmenters in mind

-Windows Defrag
-Auslogics Disk Defrag.

if none of these perform the required function, then suggestions of software that can acheive directory defrag are requestd.

[CimmerianX]

I would say no.

What keeps 'files' in a directory isn't the location of the files on disk, but rather the filesystem pointers that arrange files in the structered visual order. The defragmentation softwares out there would only make the files contiguous. I've never heard of one that will arrange files on disk according to file system pointers.

[LaxLoafer]

Maharjun,

What you're talking about sounds like free space consolidation. Whole files can be moved adjacent to each other, thus maximizing the contiguous free space. The advantage of this is realized when a file is written to disk, i.e. the file will be laid down in a contiguous block of clusters.

A cluster is the smallest unit of memory that can be allocated from a partition, typically 4096 bytes for a Windows NTFS partition. Files larger than the minimum allocation unit must be stored across multiple clusters. When a file cannot be stored in a contiguous block of clusters, it becomes fragmented. But I'm sure you knew that already :-)

Defragmenting a file can improve read performance. Windows defrag is adequate for this task.

Folders cannot be defragmented. However, the file(s) that contain folder information can.

Exactly what advantages third-party defragmentation tools offer above Windows defrag is unclear to me. I personally have never needed to use them. If you wish to optimize read performance, there are other things you can try.

[Reverend Jim]

The only difference I have seen in various defraggers is the minimum free space required for them to work. At the time (pre Windows 7) PerfecDisk worked with as little as 5% free space. Since I installed Windows 7 I have not bothered to install a third party defragger.

[maharjun]

Actually, MyDefrag is a software that sorts files and makes folders contiguous. it has various sorting criteria e.g. date of creation, folder etc.

[breactiv]

I don't really understand why you would want to make the files in folders contiguous. As other have stated, there isn't any relationship between the way the files are organized in folders and the way they are scattered in the HDD. Defragging tools differ according to the time they take to do the defrag, the space they need on the disk, and the fact that they can defragment only one selected folder. Some of them don't have the option to put the files exactly how there are in the folder, but is this really that important? In my opinion it;'s better to place the most accessed files at the beginning of the harddisk, and the files that are commonly used together to be placed in close proximity to each other, like in MyDefrag's case or Defraggler. Here are some general infos about the way a defragmenter should work: http://www.searchforsoft.com/reviews/System-Utilities/Defraggler---Editor--s-Review-31.htm