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What is disk fragmentationHard disk fragmentation is as inevitable as death and taxes. Fragmentation begins the moment the first file is stored on your computer's hard disk and it continues until the disk eventually bogs down so much that it may refuse to boot one day.Disk fragmentation occurs because of the way that the Windows Operating System stores files on your hard disk. Whenever a file is written or rewritten Windows attempts to store that file in one long string without any spaces. When your hard disk is brand new, and you have a lot of space, this is a relatively easy task. As you continue adding, modifying and deleting files, however, spaces or gaps between files begin to appear on your hard disk. This is the start of fragmentation. Once Windows is no longer able to find one contagious area to write an entire file, it will start writing the file wherever it can. It does this by breaking the file up into smaller pieces and storing it all over the hard disk as it finds available space. All of this results in the file becoming fragmented which leads to several problems the next time you need to access that file. While a fragmented text or word processing file may not be noticeably affected by file fragmentation, you will notice performance degradation when you are running software programs that are fragmented. That's because instead of loading the program all at once Windows has to find each chunk of the program and load them separately. As fragmentation spreads, the risk of data corruption grows. Badly fragmented disks are responsible for system freezes, application hang-ups and system crashes. A fragmented disk disk also slows down the startup and shutdown process significantly. Microsoft apparently realized that their file storage algorithms were dangerous and less than well-conceived so they began shipping a disk defragmenter utility with the Windows operating system starting with Windows '95. However, many IT professionals and home computer users feel that the included utility does not perform as well as it should and it is easily stymied by simple things such a the screen saver turning on during the defragmentation process. That's why so many professional and home computer users are turning to third-party disk defragmentation and optimization programs like Abexo Disk Defragmenter. Disk Defragmenter not only attacks disk fragmentation at the source, but it runs an eight-step process that produces results far beyond what is produced by Windows' included defragmentation program. One of the greatest benefits of Abexo Disk Defragmenter over the Windows utility is that the two top versions not only perform disk defragmentation but they include disk cleanup utilities as well. This is important because a lot of the fragmented files on your hard disk end up being temporary files, cookies, Internet cache and other junk files that you do not need and should be removed before defragmenting disks. Otherwise you are simply wasting time waiting for the utility to rearrange your hard disk by finding contiguous space for unnecessary files as well as wasting disk space storing those files. The utility also removes and resets the Windows Swap File space which is the primary cause of continued poor disk performance even after a file is defragmented. Disk Defragmenter also removes all of the annoyances of the Windows utility such as shutting down when the screen saver runs and its inability to defragment certain disks because of slight anomalies between the disk structure and what Windows expected to find. There is no way you can avoid having to clean up and defragment your disk disk, but there is a way to get it done right the first time. |
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