About Disk Defragmenter

Disk Defragmenter may be a utility in Microsoft Windows designed to extend access speed by rearranging files hold on on a disk to occupy contiguous storage locations, a way referred to as defragmentation. Defragmenting a disk minimizes head travel, that reduces the time it takes to browse files from and write files to the disk. starting with Windows XP, Disk Defragmenter additionally reduces system startup times.

Introduction

Disk Defragmenter additionally shipped as a part of Windows ninety five, Windows ninety eight and Windows ME. It may be scheduled  employing a Maintenance Wizard and supported command switches. This version had the limitation that if the contents of the drive modified throughout defragmentation, it rescanned the drive and restarted the method from wherever it left off.

The Disk Defragmenter in Windows 2000 was a minimal authorised version of Diskeeper, authorised from Diskeeper Corporation. It uses the subsequent techniques:

1. Moving all the index or directory info to at least one spot. Moving this spot into the middle of the info, i.e. one third of the method in, in order that average head trip knowledge is halved compared to having directory info at the front.
2. Moving occasionally used files away from the directory space.
3. Obeying a user-provided table of file descriptions to emphasise or ignore.
4. Making files contiguous in order that they'll be scan while not supererogatory seeking.

History

As early because the finish of 1982, the IBM computer DOS software system that shipped with early IBM Personal Computers enclosed a Disk Volume Organization Optimizer to defragment the 5¼-inch floppy disks that those machines used. Microsoft's DOS didn't defragment onerous disks. many third party computer code developers marketed defragmenters to fill this gap. MS-DOS 6.0 introduced Defrag. Windows NT, however, didn't provide a Defrag utility, and Symantec was advised as a doable supply of the utility.

Initial releases of Windows NGO lacked a defragmentation tool. Versions through Windows NGO three.51 didn't have associate degree application programming interface for moving knowledge clusters on onerous disks.Executive computer code, later renamed Diskeeper Corporation, free Diskeeper defragmentation computer code for Windows NGO three.51, that shipped with a made-to-order version of the NGO kernel and classification system drivers that might move clusters.

Microsoft enclosed classification system management (FSCTL) commands to maneuver clusters within the Windows NGO four.0 kernel, that worked for each NTFS and FAT32 partitions. However, Windows NGO four.0 didn't offer a graphical or command-line programme.

Limitations

In Windows 2000 and later operational systems, Disk Defragmenter has the subsequent limitations:

• It doesn't defragment files residing within the Recycle Bin or files that area unit in use. specifically, this includes the written record, page file and hibernation file.
• Prior to the Windows prospect unharness, just one volume can be analyzed or defragmented at a time and just one instance might run.
• Only native volumes will be defragmented, network volumes don't seem to be supported.
• The GUI version before Windows prospect can not be scheduled , but the command utility since Windows XP and later will be scheduled .[citation needed]
• Unlike previous versions, the GUI version in Windows prospect doesn't show a map of disk fragmentation, nor will it show progress throughout defragmentation.[citation needed]

In addition, the Windows 2000 version has the subsequent limitations that were removed in Windows XP:

• Defragmenting NTFS volumes with cluster sizes larger than four kilobytes (KB) isn't doable.
• It is unacceptable to perform fine-grained movement of uncompressed NTFS file knowledge in Windows 2000. Moving one file cluster additionally moves the four kilobyte a part of the file that contains the cluster.
• EFS encrypted files don't seem to be defragmented.