Hi, Pete.
I'm not an expert, just a user with experience starting back in the
pre-floppy days, including lots of sessions rebuilding FATs and partition
tables in the early HD days, using Norton DiskEdit and other such utilities
(when they were truly useful utilities and not just so much "eye candy" and
fluff). NTFS is much more stable than FAT, so I've not had to learn as much
about it. My understanding is the same as yours on all points.
See comments inline...
PeteV said:
Hi!
Thank you for the info.
I have also been thinking about this same topic some times, and coming to
the following thoughts.
A. When moving a file/folder inside the same HDD/partition, the
fragmentation will remain as such, as it is only a removal/change of
addresses on the file tables.
Right. For a Move within the same volume (primary partition or logical
drive), the file will not be moved at all, so any fragmentation will remain.
Only the directory entry will be written to the new directory and deleted
from the old.
B. When copying a file/folder inside the same HDD/partition, the copy will
automatically get defragmented up to the level the placement of the copy
will
allow
Right. The Copy command deals with a "file" as a unit, so the scattered
pieces of the file will be gathered from the old location and written as a
single unit to the new location.
C. When moving/copying a file/folder or whole HDD/partition to another
HDD/partition/media, file as a single file or folders or the whole
contents
by the folder tree structure, it will automatically get defragmented up to
the level the re-placement or placement of the copy will allow
Right. A Move to a different volume is really a Copy, followed by a Delete
of the entry in the old directory (and FAT).
D. When copying a whole HDD/partition to another HDD/partition by a
special
copying utility as a straight full copy bit-by-bit or rather
block-by-block/sector-by-sector the fragmentation will remain as such, but
a
slight benefit on this may be the checking/renewal of the file tables. Do
I
have right? This is a point I'm most unsure on this topic ...
Probably right, but this depends on the specific utility used. Some work
with files, others with bits or blocks or sectors, as you said. If you use
a file-handling utility, the fragmentation should be reduced, as with Copy.
Two more possible benefits of a utility that moves bits or sectors, rather
than files, is that (a) it can move the boot sector and other structures
that are not "files", and (b) it might verify that there are no unwriteable
areas on the destination disk.
You mentioned backing up to "some 15 DVD discs". That comes under my
previous point about which specific utility you use and how it handles the
problem of multiple destination discs. Some files will probably get split
between two (or more) DVD discs. I've not dealt with this situation at all.
The closest I've come is copying or moving multi-megabye files/folders to a
different computer by using floppies. In that situation, I've used
Backup/Restore to copy to/from the multiple floppies; in these cases,
Backup/Restore dealt with files, not with sectors, so I ended up with
defragmented (to the extent possible) copies in the new location. The
intermediate files on the floppies were most likely unfragmented (and maybe
compressed, too, by Backup), but that did not concern me. Straight HD to HD
copies or moves should reduce or eliminate fragmentation; HD to DVD to HD
may or may not affect fragmentation, depending on the specific utility used.
If we've got this wrong, maybe a real guru will straighten it out for both
of us. ;^}
RC
