What is Disk Fragmentation on Windows and how does it optimize your hard disk?
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Imagine your hard disk was just a lot of empty spots to put blocks in. You have 5 yellow blocks, 5 blue blocks, and 5 red blocks filled in which are your files
If you take out the 5 blue blocks (delete a file) you now have 5 yellow, 5 empty spots and 5 red blocks
Say you want to add 10 black blocks, it would fill up the 5 blank and put the other 5 at the end. Your hard disk is now fragmented and if you want to collect all the black blocks your computer needs to collect it from two (or more) seperate areas.
Defragmentation just puts them all together so it would be 5 yellow , 10 black, 5 red.
On old “spinning disk” hard drives, a fragmented drive adds time as the head physically has to move to each area to read the data. A solid state drive does not have this issue and in fact, you should not defragment a solid state drive as they have limited write amounts (still ALOT) so you’re writing blocks with no benefit
Imagine your hard disk was just a lot of empty spots to put blocks in. You have 5 yellow blocks, 5 blue blocks, and 5 red blocks filled in which are your files
If you take out the 5 blue blocks (delete a file) you now have 5 yellow, 5 empty spots and 5 red blocks
Say you want to add 10 black blocks, it would fill up the 5 blank and put the other 5 at the end. Your hard disk is now fragmented and if you want to collect all the black blocks your computer needs to collect it from two (or more) seperate areas.
Defragmentation just puts them all together so it would be 5 yellow , 10 black, 5 red.
On old “spinning disk” hard drives, a fragmented drive adds time as the head physically has to move to each area to read the data. A solid state drive does not have this issue and in fact, you should not defragment a solid state drive as they have limited write amounts (still ALOT) so you’re writing blocks with no benefit
It’s amazing how not eli5 this sub always is. Especially now when it’s easy to Eli5. 5 year olds can’t read essays lol. I’ll give it a shot
When you write to a hard disk, files are stored in a certain order, like alphabetically. Like a bookshelf. When you remove a book, you leave a gap and the hard drive just starts putting in pages anywhere that they fit. It takes the hard drive longer to find the full book because it needs to go look on every shelf for the pages.
Defragmentation is just kind of ordering the books again
This isn’t so important with SSDs because there’s no seek time, which means, a hard drive has to spin and spin looking at each shelf, but a SSD just goes and gets the thing it wants
It’s amazing how not eli5 this sub always is. Especially now when it’s easy to Eli5. 5 year olds can’t read essays lol. I’ll give it a shot
When you write to a hard disk, files are stored in a certain order, like alphabetically. Like a bookshelf. When you remove a book, you leave a gap and the hard drive just starts putting in pages anywhere that they fit. It takes the hard drive longer to find the full book because it needs to go look on every shelf for the pages.
Defragmentation is just kind of ordering the books again
This isn’t so important with SSDs because there’s no seek time, which means, a hard drive has to spin and spin looking at each shelf, but a SSD just goes and gets the thing it wants
Your hard drive is a disk. Imagine all of the area on the bottom side of the disk is memory. When you ‘burn’ the disk, you ‘burn’ the files onto it, so that your CD-ROM can later read it. Imagine burning a few large files that take up a lot of area. Now you’ve got spare space scattered all around the disk. A tiny piece of free area (memory) here, a little bit there. After the leftover space is split accross the disk, when you’re burning something else on it, you have to use the leftover empty spaces that are all around the disk. This makes it harder to access those files – the disk has to rotate more times for the laser to pick up the bits of files. Defragmentation takes the scattered pieces of files and brings them as close together as possible, so your disk has to rotate less to access files.
Your hard drive is a disk. Imagine all of the area on the bottom side of the disk is memory. When you ‘burn’ the disk, you ‘burn’ the files onto it, so that your CD-ROM can later read it. Imagine burning a few large files that take up a lot of area. Now you’ve got spare space scattered all around the disk. A tiny piece of free area (memory) here, a little bit there. After the leftover space is split accross the disk, when you’re burning something else on it, you have to use the leftover empty spaces that are all around the disk. This makes it harder to access those files – the disk has to rotate more times for the laser to pick up the bits of files. Defragmentation takes the scattered pieces of files and brings them as close together as possible, so your disk has to rotate less to access files.
Imagine trying to read a 100 page book, but the 100 pages are scattered in some random order in the book. In order to read the entire book in the correct order, you not only have to use time to read the book, but you also need to spend time finding each page in the correct order in order to read the entire book. This is a fragmented disk.
Now consider instead of figuring out the order while reading it, you spend the time to put the pages in order first before reading the book. The process of putting the pages in order is defragmenting.
The book is the hard drive in this analogy and the pages are blocks of memory stored on the hard drive.
Imagine trying to read a 100 page book, but the 100 pages are scattered in some random order in the book. In order to read the entire book in the correct order, you not only have to use time to read the book, but you also need to spend time finding each page in the correct order in order to read the entire book. This is a fragmented disk.
Now consider instead of figuring out the order while reading it, you spend the time to put the pages in order first before reading the book. The process of putting the pages in order is defragmenting.
The book is the hard drive in this analogy and the pages are blocks of memory stored on the hard drive.
Imagine a warehouse. It starts empty so the first load can be put on the same shelf with all the pallets next to each other. But as pallats get pulled and some are replaced there are a lot of holes that are scattered across the warehouse.
So loads start getting spread out too. The warehouse is like your hard drive and fragmentation is like the loads that get spread around the warehouse.
Defragmentation means taking all of the pallets off the shelf and sorting them and putting each load together.
Imagine a warehouse. It starts empty so the first load can be put on the same shelf with all the pallets next to each other. But as pallats get pulled and some are replaced there are a lot of holes that are scattered across the warehouse.
So loads start getting spread out too. The warehouse is like your hard drive and fragmentation is like the loads that get spread around the warehouse.
Defragmentation means taking all of the pallets off the shelf and sorting them and putting each load together.
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