Free Software Tools -- (For Home Use)

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Some tools that I have used to identify some irregular activities:

A good analogy of this fragmentation scenerio would be to imagine Dave from DFFalcons at a swap meet. -- Dave has a spot with all his preemo Falcon parts and plenty of time on his hands. Remember this is not Utopia. Dave wanders around the other vendors noting what they have, the condition, price, and some other information. This is always before any of the rest of us gets there!!

He writes this down on a page in his notebook, if this vendor has more than one of a similar item this is also recorded on the same page, if there is more than will fit on one page he finds a new blank page and so-on for each of the different Falcon parts this vendor has (each on a new page).

Dave from experience knows that he will find more than one vendor with the same part but has no way of knowing how many or where. He keeps a master index of the individual parts and which page in this notebook that he wrote the details. For example Script -- page2, Engine -- page3, Fenders -- page4… Simple enough until vendor2 (new page) has some Script -- page5, Glass -- page6, Doors -- page7… After 5 vendors the one page of his master index is full so he needs to find a new blank page after his last entry to start another index (worse case between same items for a vendor). This is recorded on his first page that the index is continued on page 45 and so-on until he gets back to his own spot. (This is a very simplistic start of an index and file fragmentation)

Wendy has sold some of Dave's parts so Dave being the true entrepreneur checks his notebook to search-out the best parts that he has found on his wanderings before heading back to that vendor. This involves searching through the index to find a page where he wrote it down, looking at what he wrote and possibly going to another page to find a better part. (more Index --> Page --> Content).

However, when gets back to the vendor the part is gone. Dave refers back to his notebook (Index --> Page --> Content (flags item Gone), next Index --> Page --> Content repeat until he finds another suitable part and heads out to that vendor…

Now if you take this a bit further Dave has a BIG notebook. There are pages of indexes and part names all over the place (Index1 with 3 entries for Script, Index2 with 1 entry for Script… Index21 with even more entries for Script…) to find a particular part at a large swap meet near mid morning (Index1 --> Script1 --> Page# --> Content (Gone) --> Index1 --> Script2 --> Page# --> Content (Gone)… Index1 --> Index2 -->…Index10 -->…) you can see where this is going. Dave is now spending more time looking up parts than going anywhere. It's time to defrag his notebook -- put all of his indexes together, put all of the still remaining parts together (get rid of the Gone stuff). A search could now go (Index1 --> Script --> Page# --> Content --> next Page --> Content) (all the pages for Script are together and there is only one entry in the Index for Script; there is no need to go back to the Index and the index now only has unique entries -- 1 index page now vs 30 all over the place before ).

In the computer world things are a lot more complex as there are many writers to this BIG notebook - vendors6's information can be interspersed with vendor2's, with vendor8's… (File Fragmentation), Multiple indexes are created (Index Fragmentation), more pages created to store temporary memory contents (Page File Fragmentation).

You can well imagine how much time is taken to find anything when you have 184 Index Fragmentation, 1000+ fragmentations on a single file, and your temporary memory pages are fragment also. Does SLOWWWW ring through?

How often should you defragment your hard drive?; -- how busy have you been?. Keep in mind that it is always what you are currently working on that is being fragmented. -- But it says I do not need to defragment -- Your computer based this on the percentage of fragmentation to total disk space a 1% fragmentation on a 40GB disk drive is still thousands of multiple fragments. Your computer will start to fragment files as soon as you power-up… Another thing to look at is the amount of space allocated to you temporary internet folder. On large drives the default is excessive (I run mine at 10M - I have seen some as high as 4GB). These files are always fragmented (100 fragment for an 84K picture). Thousands of files with multiple fragments - These also contributes to index fragmentation -- pages of indexes with multiple fragmentations) Defragment Often

Now this example does not depict reality. Dave does not keep a notebook of all the Falcon parts at a swap meet. By the time he tours the vendors with the limited Falcon parts there is seldom anything of value for the rest of us… if Dave passed it by then… If you have found Utopia then just look-up Dave and get what you need.
 
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