Submitted by: Jim Dickens(172) Jim Dickens Action Creates Success Log in to become a member of Jim Dickens's Fan Club!
First let's decipher the geekspeak. Defrag is short for defragmentation. It is a synonym for gathering or assembling. Defragmentation (or defragging) a disk drive means that you are gathering the various fragmented pieces of a disk file into one contiguous location on the disk drive. Stay with me on this -- it will eventually make sense.
First a little background. A hard disk is magnetically divided into cylinders and sectors. The "cylinders" are actually concentric circles radiating out from the center that would look a lot like a bulls eye with many rings. Each of those cylinders is divided into segments called sectors. Each sector is addressed by its cylinder number and its sector number in the cylinder.
The computer continues grabbing sectors, filling them, and linking them until the file is completely written to disk. If the file is deleted, then all of the sectors are returned to the cache of unused sectors. If the file is shortened, then the new end of the file is found and any unnecessary sectors are returned to the unused sector cache. If the file is extended, the computer grabs whatever new sectors are needed and builds the links as necessary.
The problem comes because of your various activities on the computer. When you initially create that career launching proposal, the file may be all in one contiguous block of sectors on one or two cylinders. However, as you add some sections to the proposal and remove other sections, that file containing the proposal may be in several spots on the disk. That means that the first sector may be in cylinder 3 sector 199 and the second sector in cylinder 59 sector 3 and the third sector in cylinder 2 sector 203 and so on.
So what! Is it really a problem? Your desktop computer is extremely fast when given a computing task like sorting or calculating because it does all that in memory with addressing. The disk storage is the achilles heel of the computer for speed. It is one of the only remaining mechanical devices in the computer and that means that the overall speed of the computer will never be faster than that mechanical device allows.
The best tangible illustration of a hard disk is a looseleaf binder full of blank paper. The binder is the hard drive and each of the pages is a sector. Then you start writing stuff in the binder one page at a time. Your subjects come out one at a time and you fill 2 pages with the first subject and 5 pages with the second and 4 pages with the third. You now have 11 pages filled (2+5+4).
Then you realize that there is another 2 pages of stuff to write about the first subject. In the name of speed you just write that added material on pages 12 and 13 and note at the end of page 2 that the reader needs to go to page 12 for the rest of the text (skipping over pages 3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10, and 11).
When a reader is trying to read that first subject, he must read page 1 and 2 and then turn pages one at a time to get to page 12. The reader is not productively reading when he is turning pages. Time to defragment the binder! To defrag the binder, all four pages of the first subject would be placed together in a contiguous set of pages, then both pages of the second subject, and then the 5 pages of the third subject.
After the physical defragmentation of the binder, the reader no longer has to spend time turning pages instead of reading.
After the magnetic defragmentaion of the hard disk, the computer spend more time reading data and less time bouncing from sector to sector and cylinder to cylinder. Defragmentation should be a part of your regular computer maintenance!
Jim Dickens has been programming and accumulating expertise in software and hardware since 1979. During that time, he has been as confused as anyone about some of the technical jargon. Persistence and the desire to eat regularly have enabled him to learn enough to explain some of that geekspeak in www.laptopsforhumans.com.
In the late 1980s, Jim started studying self-help literature to branch out and to hone his business and personal success skills. He has applied the translation skills that he uses for computers to that self-help literature in www.actioncreatessuccess.com.
» left by Ben Jones(4,894) Ben Jones (1 year 85 days ago.)
Good description and good analogy Jim. You've made what could have been a complicated process that much easier to understand. Well done!
For those of you wondering how often you should defrag your hard drive, it all depends on the sort of use you put your computer through.
If you just surf the net, create the odd word document and write some emails then it's not required as often; a few times a year would probably take care of things. If, however you use your computer every day, download a lot of files, install and remove programs on a regular basis then I'd suggest a lot more frequently; monthly as a minimum and probably weekly would be better.
So how do you do it? Easy as 1, 2, 3 and 4. Click on “Start”, then “Programs” or “All Programs” go to “Accessories”, then “System Tools” and run “Disk Defragmenter”.
A few other quick tips for speeding up your computer include:
* Don't have too many files, folders or shortcuts on your desktop
* Don't install thousands of fonts on your computer
* Clean up programs by uninstalling things you no longer use or want
» left by ratrace (1 year 79 days ago.)
Wondeful article! Nowadays, we keep adding and deleting programs and files from the system, its hardly a surprise if the system doesnt get fragmented and slowdown. Backup, file transfers and even something like burning a CD take awefully long, quite naturally, if the HDD has roam all over the place to find the file fragments, its going to take longer! makes sense as to why its important to keep fragmentation out to maintain optimum speed and performance. Respond to this comment
» left by hogwart from Bangalore (1 year 37 days ago.)
Fragmentation is a disease that spreads into the system to completely spoil the performance starting with slowness and then other stability issues. Respond to this comment
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