Remedying Fragmentation

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The remedy for these conditions, as well as for diminished performance on Windows-based machines, is simple enough: Defragment the affected disks. Defragmentation programs consolidate the various file fragments, positioning them on the disk contiguously (in one piece) and producing larger chunks of free space. Note, however, that the goal of a defragmenter is not to produce a pretty picture in the GUI when the program completes; rather, it is to increase performance and system stability without absorbing system resources. Some defrag programs take things to extremes and over-consume resources in order to produce a screen that shows one contiguous block of free space. In practice, this is not necessary, as long as most of the free space is available in a couple of large pieces.

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