After reading another post about why defragmentation isn’t as necessary with modern devices, i started wondering what exactly fragmentation even is. How and why does it happen and doesn’t it screw up your data?
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Let’s say you have a library. And you are in the mood to read a book. So you just grab the book and read it, front to back. EZ.
But, let’s say, when you’re trying to put the book back, for whatever reason, there isn’t enough room for it to fit on the shelf. So, instead, you rip the book in half, put half of it on the shelf where it used to be, and the other half in the next available free spot. You also include a note with the first half explaining where to find the second.
The next time you’re in the mood to read that book, you’ll grab the first half, read it, but then you’ll have to stop and find the second half to continue reading.
This is fragmentation. And, if done a lot, can really slow down the loading and reading of files.
*De*fragmentation is the process of sitting down, taking all the books off the shelves, putting them back together, and putting them back on the shelves, whole.
It’s not really a thing anymore because the ways in which we store and organize files are better, the ways in which we load and read files is better, and the configuration and speed of newer hardware (e.g. SSDs) makes fragmentation largely irrelevant.
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