QotD: Fragmentation
Posted October 26th, 2003 @ 05:02pm by Erik J. Barzeski
Question: Do you defragment your hard disk(s)? Regularly? Ever?
My Answer: Never. Though erasing, installing a new OS, and drag-copying my old files back over is a pretty effective way of doing so. Then today I read this:
While we're talking about the not so well known/hidden new Panther
features: while digging through the kernel sources i've found a quite
amusing new feature built into HFS+. Namely automatic file
defragmentation.
Everytime an application opens a file for reading, HFS+ checks if the
file is fragmented and is less than 20MB in size. If so, it copies the
file's contents to a continuous region on the disk and frees up the
previously allocated blocks.
Even less reason to defrag, I guess. Some of my Windows-using friends defragmented every day!
You are encouraged to answer the Question of the Day for yourself in the comments or on your blog.
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Posted 26 Oct 2003 at 7:34pm #
I'd like to see a link to that and some more technical detail. While I think it would be a great idea, I'd like to know more about how it's implemented.
Posted 26 Oct 2003 at 7:55pm #
Some people call me the Space Cowboy...
Maurice, the eMac formerly known as Wintermute, is now safely converted to OS 10.3. Not to praise Apple twice in a row, but Panther is great. Most important on my list of new features is Exposé, but that's just the...
Posted 27 Oct 2003 at 8:29pm #
Defragment?
I have never defragmented my iMac's hard drive in the nearly two years that I've had it. No performance degradation, no disk errors. If it ain't broke . . ....
Posted 27 Oct 2003 at 8:38pm #
I'd like to see a link to that and some more technical detail
I realize it's not exactly what you're looking for, but here's the post in question.
- Scott
Posted 29 Oct 2003 at 5:52pm #
I defrag every 3-6 months although sometimes I slack and avoid it for a year or so. I do it more on Macs than PCs, not out of necessity, but because I care about my Macs more... heh.
Posted 30 Oct 2003 at 8:34am #
Here's a link that discusses it more.
Posted 01 Nov 2003 at 10:33am #
Panther Bits
While waiting for my own copy of Panther, I am, of course, reading reports on Panther carefully. Beyond the usually flashy stuff with little substance that comes out on mainstream