The Hard Life of a Hard Drive How

The Hard Life of a Hard Drive How files grow, become fragmented, and are defragmented Adapted from the File: Fragmentation. Defragmentation. gif contained in Wikipedia’s English version of the article on Defragmentation (http: //en. wikipedia. org/wiki/Defragmentation) under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License.

1 - A fresh start

2 – A new file – the red file

3 – A second new file – the blue file

4 – The red file is added to

5 – A new file – the green file

6 – A new file - the teal file

7 – The blue file is added to

8 – A new file – the orange file

9 – Five files

10 – The blue file is deleted

11 – A new file – blue #2

12 – The green file is added to! It’s going to be slow to read …

13 – Start defrag – make space for red

14 – Move one red block back

15 – Make more room for red

16 – Move one more red back

17 – Make more room for red

18 – Red is now contiguous

19 – Make more room

20 – Move in blue #2

21 – Blue #2 is now contiguous

22 – Start to defrag green

23 – Green …

24 – Green …

25 – Green …

26 – Green …

27 – Move teal to make more room

28 - … and move in green

29 – Make more room

30 - … and move more green

31 – Make more room

32 - … finish green

33 – Move on to teal

34 - … and put one teal in place

35 – Make more room

36 - … and move more teal

37 – Make more room

38 - … and move more teal

39 – Move more teal

40 – Almost done

41 – Finished defragmentation