What is De-fragmentation?, Fragmentation? and why are they needed?

Question

im stuck on 3 question in an assignment i have to finish by monday can anyone help by telling me the best way to describe De-Fragmentation, Fragmentation and why they are needed??
Thanks a Million!

Answer 1

K lets start with fragmentation. Ok heres what it is : When you install or basically write any file to any media the data is written as it is on the disk and not ness. one sector after the other on the surface of the disk so basically its scrambled like a jig saw puzzle so when the CPU processors data its gonna have to collect from multiple areas of the hard drive for information on one single file and hence takes time, more like searching for your clothes in a messed up room, by the time you find it a lot of time passes by, but imagine everything was nicely in order in one location! THe whole process becomes much fast, same way in a computer the process of De Fragmentation just places data in order so it becomes fast to access them to process. Hope this gives a basic idea

Answer 2

When a storage device stores data, it saves it in the next available slot. Say there are five slots; | | | | | |



I save file A, a word document. Now I have |A| | | | |



Now I have downloaded a program, B -- |A|B| | | |



Now I've added some stuff to A -- |A|B|A| | |



Here's C, a music file I downloaded |A|B|A|C| |



Here's some more to B -- |A|B|A|C|B|



You can see the files have become separated. In this example, A is only in two places on the disk, but I recently checked my hard drive and I had a file scattered into 1,600 places on the disk. To read the file, my computer had to run around to all 1,600 locations and pick up the fragments to load into the RAM. You can imagine that this would be very slow compared to what happens when we defragment a drive;



|AA|BB|C|



The files are now grouped into one section, which makes for much fast access and less stress on your drive, especially if it is a disk drive such as a hard drive.

Answer 3

Fragmentation happens when you delete files often.

Example :



You copy 100 small pictures on your computer. They are stored in order on the hard drive. ( Think of it as a table with rows and columns ). Now the top rows are filled, the rest is empty.



You delete 10 of the small pictures. The top rows now have "holes" in them, where the pictures used to be. These holes are free.



Now you install a huge video game. This takes a lot of space, and the operating system places the game's files in the holes ( where the pictures were ) as well as the free rows below where the pictures were.



Imagine this happening hundreds of times over. Now your hard drive looks like a checkerboard, with different files spread all over the hard drive.



When a program wants to read its data, the data will not be in one place, but scattered around. The system needs to find the data first. The hard drive moans because of the effort to read data from many different places.



This is called "fragmentation" because programs have their data "fragmented" across the hard drive.



Defragmentation is simple. We take the data and try ( like a puzzle ) to put it all in one place. Each program with his own tidy uninterrupted place on the hard drive.





Fragmentation slows down all programs.

Defragmentation speeds them back up.



You can think of reasons on why defragmentation is needed, now, can't you?



Best of luck!

Answer 4

http://www.microsoft.com/atwork/getstarted/speed.mspx



http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-defragmenting-a-computer.htm









http://keepitsimplehtml.com