When I defragment what does it do?

Question

Dell Inspiron 2200

Answer 1

Imagine your hard disk is a bookshelf.

Your bookshelf is pretty full and you've just bought some more books, and they're a trilogy.

You don't have room to put them next to each other, so you put one book on one shelf, one on another, and the last one on a third shelf.

Then, when you want to read them, you have to get them from their different locations before you can read the whole thing.

Defragmenting is akin going through the books and reorganising them so that all the volumes of a collection are together.

Answer 2

Its like having a CD collection in perfect order, but the more CDs you add and the more you use the CD collection, it becomes untidy and not in the perfect alphabetic order you first had it in, thus it takes you ages to look for your particular CD.

When you defrag your computer you are condensing all the fragmented files and putting them in such an order that your computer can easily find a folder without rummaging through the entire collection and collecting all the fragmented files (that's why you get loads of scratching noises). Defraging will allow your computer to work more effectively and reduce scratching noises.

If you have had the computer a while then you may want to allow it to defrag over night as it could take a while.

Does this explanation help?

I have a Dell Dimension 5100 desktop and a Dell Inspiron 6400 so I know what I'm talking about (I think, lol)

Answer 3

Files are held on the disc in sections. If a file is deleted it leaves a 'hole'. When a new file is written it may fill part of this hole and need another file to complete the fill or it may be too big for the hole so it fills it as much as possible then write the rest elsewhere. If lots of 'holes' exist it fills them in turn so the seek head has to jump about to read the whole files. The place where the information is held as to where the bits of the file are is held in the index so it jumps back there to see where the next bit is, reads that then jumps back and so on. This jumping about takes time.
Defragging the disc takes all the pieces of each file and joins them nose to tail so the head only has to go to the start to read the lot. This avoids the jumps and makes the read quicker.
Lots of file writes and deletes makes the disc a mess. Defrag cleans it up and makes it tidy again.
RoyS

Answer 4

When you edit a file and add data to it, the operating system can't fit it back into the original space sometimes. It gets around this by writing the file in fragments - the first part here, the 2nd part over there in an open space, any other parts scattered around somewhere else. The more editing you do, the more the file can be fragmented. Imagine this when you've got thousands or tens of thousands of files. It takes time for the system to find all of these fragments when you want to work on something.

Defragging tries to copy each of these fragments into one fragment per file. It can't do it with EVERY file, but it does do most of them, hopefully. Now the system can read most files in one pass, and so it speeds up the operation.

Answer 5

It's a bit like tidying up at home! Over time your computer hard-disk can get untidy, with rubbish and disorder, so it slows down. Like you trying to find something in a cupboard full of junk. So, defragmenting tides things up, restores order and allows full use of the un-used space on the disk. If you go to 'defragment' on My Computer and run analysis, it will tell you if you need to defragment or not.

Answer 6

defragmentation is a process that reduces the amount of fragmentation in file systems. It does this by physically reorganizing the contents of the disk to store the pieces of each file close together and contiguously. Defragmenting may help to increase the life-span of the hard drive itself, by minimizing head movement and simplifying data access operations.

you do defragment when your computer becoming slow and it's not organized well. hope this information will help you to understand what is defragment.

Answer 7

it rearranges the data on your drive into some sort of order. when you install stuff or save stuff. bits of data can get seperated, so when you go to run a program, it has to look all over the disk to piece together the data inorder to run it.

after defrag, all these bits should be put next to each other, making the loading times etc.. run a lot quicker.

Answer 8

Hearts' comment makes sense only if you run Windows 95 on a hard disk less than 2 GB, otherwise the space saving is so small as non-existent.

The other one is right on the money.

Answer 9

Puts all the bits of files in order a bit like when you tidy a room same principle.

Answer 10

Degragment is making more room on your computer by condensing files.