🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <scott.720888755@phylo>, scott@phylo.life.uiuc.edu (Snooky
Fudge) wrote:
> 
> After dutifully defragmenting disks once a month for a number of 
> years on Hard Drives with interleaves of 1:3 and 1:1, and never
> noticing any improvement in access speed, no matter how fragmented
> the drive's files were, I'm left wondering:
> 
> Do file defragmentation utilities actually increase the rate of
> file access by the OS and application programs?

I don't think there's a really simple answer to this question because a lot
depends upon the applications you use, how the disk is accessed, and so
forth.

My own experience, having done a limited amount of measurement before and
after shows me that I don't really see a slowdown until the disk is about
5% or more fragmented. Measuring launch times indicates to me that LARGE
applications launch more quickly if they are defragged. If the application
is small and only occupies a few blocks, I can't measure any difference.
The same seems to be true for LARGE datafiles, particularly those which are
loaded entirely into memory by the application.

I would be interested in hearing anyone else's experiences. I used to
defrag once a week, now I run the checker every two weeks or so and defrag
when the percentage of fragmented files gets above 5 or so. With my system,
that means I defrag about once every 4 or 6 weeks on average.

-----------
Jerry Wilcox - iscjcw@uccvma.ucop.edu
All opinions expressed are MINE -- I'd have a different job if the
University wanted me to speak for it.