How does "Defragmentation" work?

Question

I know when I rollback my computer this returns it to factory-fresh state, erasing any files on my computer. Does Defragmenting a drive do something similiar?

I want to install Sims 3 and expansion, and it's gonna take up a lot of room on my drive and the game runs hella slow. I'm wondering if I should do defragment and rollback to get my computer running a bit faster. The problem is it takes 3-4 hours to rollback, and it's a hassle.

I am a TC for 'Religion & Spirituality', so no smartass comments please.

Answer 1

Defragmenting your hard drive doesn't rollback your hard drive, as in restoring your computer.



As you install, uninstall, create, delete, move, and copy files around your computer, the files start becoming fragmented. What this means is that to you - everything looks clean and neat, but to your computer, although some files are in the same folder - that doesn't mean they're right next to each other on the hard drive. One could very well be on one portion of the disk - and another's someplace else on the hard drive platter.



It's a little complicated to explain - Wikipedia's got a great write-up on it: look here - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defragmentation



Anyway - defragmenting compacts and organizes the files and folders better, allowing quicker access to them. So absolutely - I would say defragment your hard drive. The amount of time it takes depends on how much space you have on your hard drive, and how much of that space is free.

Answer 2

Rollback is different to defrag. Defrag takes all the stuff that has been separated into different bits and sorts it so the pieces are together.

For example, if the hard drive is fairly full and you save a large document file parts of it will be put in different parts of the memory - that is - it is split up. That means that when the file is read the hard drive has to read its sections from various parts of the drive which slows it down



Defragging sorts all these bits out, copying a bit from one part of the drive and writing it to a different part so all the bits of the same file are together.It then deletes the original part it has copied. As it does this it moves all the files so that there is a large, empty section of hard drive to be used for saving new files and programs. This speeds the whole computer up.

Answer 3

defragmenting a drive is when the harddrive moves data from the outside of the platter (slower) to the inside of the platter (faster) by writting it into data clusters which now show a 0 instead of a 1. This is to make sure that all data for a particular thing is close together so the program or file runs at optimium efficiency. With Vista and 7, this is no longer necessary as the operating systems are always running defragmentation processes to keep the OS fast, unlike XP or 2000 which have to be scheduled.

Answer 4

When the computer is saving data on the hard drive, it usually places the data on the first avaiable sector, to maximize write speed. As time goes by and data have been rewritten, moved, deleted etc there will be more and more "small areas" that no file can fit in. The hard drive solves this problem by splitting the file(s) into smaller pieces called fragments, and places the pieces all over the drive to store the file. When theese areas get smaller and smaller, the drive have to divide the files into smallar and smaller pieces often resulting in files that are split into thousands of pieces all over the drive. This is called fragmentation. When the computer loads a file, the harddrive needs to serach for the file, find out how many pieces it has been divided in, find all the pieces and put them together to a single file for the computer to read, whitch takes time. The more fragmented the drive is the slower it gets, and is more likley to get even more fragmented. The solution is to defragment it: The drive searces for all the pieces, and re-arange them into whole files in one side of the disk and empty space in another side of the disk, making it easier for the computer to find and store new files quicker.

Answer 5

No, defragmentation does not return your pc to factory-fresh state. I will explain what Defragmentation stands for.



Imagine that files on your HDD are pieces of paper. Let's say that you the floor is the HDD, and you start spreading those pieces of paper on the floor. Now, they are stored there. Because you spread the paper aleatory, you will get free spaces between the pieces of paper. Now, the floor is almost full, except those spaces. When you want to "store" another piece of paper, you don't have enough room to store it without the paper to intersect. What does the HDD do? It breaks the file into pieces. You will do the same thing: take the piece of paper, and cut it, so it fits into the free spaces. The problem is that when you want to read the piece of paper, you can't just take it and read it, you will have to fin the pieces and put them together, process that takes time. Defragmentation takes all these files and puts them in order, so all the files are continuous and there are no empty spaces, so reading the file takes less time and the PC performance is boosted.



Hope you understood.

Answer 6

Your hard drive saves files my physically writing them using magnetism. To read, write, or overwrite these files, the writer part has to be over the part of the disk that it is reading or writing. The information isn't always recorded right next to each other, and when you delete info, that leaves gaps. defragmenting simply rewrites the information on your hard drive so it is next to each other. This way, the moving parts need to move less. It makes your hard drive more efficient, but does not free up any file space: all your files will remain intact.



But if you got the game installed and it runs, albeit slowly, then hard drive space probably isn't your problem. Rather, you're probably lacking in RAM or graphics capabilities. Check the game's minimum and recommended requirements, and then make sure your system is up to snuff.

Answer 7

Defragging is helpful to prevent slowdown and lags. When the HDD gets fragemnted, it takes longer to access files. It does not delete any files, only rearranges fragmented files back into a sequential order. Defrag regularly or simply get an automatic defragmenter.

Answer 8

De-fragmenting just takes data scattered on your hard drive and puts it in order. Making it easier and faster for your computer to find things. The rollback program slows computers, anti-virus slows computers, never deleting cookies and temp files slows computers. Having too many things in the running in the back ground (usually listed in the lower right hand corner by the time) slows your computer. I'm always using my recovery disc to format my hard drive and speed up my pc.

Answer 9

no defrag is when your computer relocates a files physical location on your hard drive to make it more accessible it doesn't really affect you the user very much other than it may make it run slightly faster



Sung has a good point don't use the Windows defrag utility it really doesn't work well if at all I too use defraggler

Answer 10

No, defragmentation is something different.



On your harddisk, all data is divided into small sized blocks of a certain size. A file consisting of many blocks may be scattered all over the disk, so defragmentation means that the blocks belonging to one file will be put as close as possible to each other, allowing disk reading operation to be quick.

Answer 11

Woman

Answer 12

Defragmentation is a process where your computer puts files in the correct order making it easier for it to access the hardware. i use Defraggler (Tells me the free space too)