I return!
So, it is computer maintenance time. I do most of my major work about 4 times a year. I take time to get up-to-date on software and enhance my understanding of basic processes. I am not done but I have a LOT of homework left to do. So, as I stretch and get woken up to tackle it, I figured I'd post here.
So, last night I ran a defrag on my OS hard-drive (C drive) from safe mode. In this, I was pushing files that were most used to the edge of the disc. And 17 hours later I moved from around 18% fragmentation to about 9.5%. Now, I am unhappy with the amount of fragmentation but I am happy with the other part (see attached rant).
So, any suggestions on new boot discs that are out there that will help me unlock the disc to defrag? My current ones don't seem to work in the new systems.
****RANT****
Like a person, a computer reads/writes information like a book. Left to right, top to bottom or if you manga readers out there rather, in order. But since the information is stored digitally instead of physically the data isn't static. It is written, rewritten, and written some more. However, since computers know that they have a preset amount of space for them to write their story, and they can not simply add pages they use all the space they can get. Now, this can lead to fragmentation. Now, without straying too much, a computer can sort this information because of index files, but it takes time. So, this rant would be considered fragmented. The purpose of defragmenting a disk is so that the computer doesn't have to flip through so many pages and look at so much stuff before it finds what it is being sought.
Now, since you always read the first page of a book first, so does a computer. So, in this book of short stories, I put the one you read most often in the front and the ones read least often in the back.
For those who want a visual of what this looks like
Page one 1 2 3 4 is data names.
11111222222333333444444
Page one when 1 and 3 update get updated.
11100222222330333444444113
Now we install 5
111552222223353334444441135555
Now, you used 2 to save a file
11155222222335333444444113555522
Now, imagine if I was to tell you to find me 5, it is much harder here and we are talking 4 bytes of data, not even a kilobyte and we are dealing with data staggering into terabytes. Imagine that but we are using 1,000,000,000,000 places. A TRILLION PLACES! It boggles the mind a bit to think you could be asked to find that 5 among a trillion locations, I'd rather find the needle.
I have 98,700,000,000 places that are not in an optimal order (9.87%)
Now, this isn't to say that one should defrag their discs constantly. The data is more important than the speed of the data and frequent defragging will make the ability to recover lost data impossible. Which is a rant for another time.
*****End rant*****
Zachary Johnson "Zaclicalicious" Thirsty
- 3 months, 22 days ago
