How Disk Defragmenter Reports Fragmentation (124917)
The information in this article applies to:
This article was previously published under Q124917 SYMPTOMS
When you run Microsoft Disk Defragmenter a second time immediately after
defragmenting your hard disk, it reports that a small percentage of
fragmentation still exists.
-or-
Disk Defragenter reports that it is unnecessary to defragment your hard
disk if the fragmentation level is below 10 percent.
CAUSE
The following information applies to physical drives only:
Disk Defragmenter examines your disk directories and creates a database of
files and their associated clusters. For Windows 95 Disk Defragmenter to
identify these files as unmovable, they are marked with Hidden and System
attributes. These unmovable file clusters, along with any bad sectors, can
cause contiguous files to be interrupted by one or more clusters. This
interruption, although negligible to the performance of the drive, is still
considered a degree of fragmentation and is reported as such.
These symptoms may also occur if you select Consolidate Free Space Only
under Advanced Options without ever performing a "Full defragmentation
(both files and free space)."
MORE INFORMATION
Disk Defragmenter is designed to work this way; therefore, this behavior
requires no workaround.
NOTE: You should NEVER remove the attributes from mounted CVFs and
defragment the HOST under Windows 95.
| Modification Type: | Major | Last Reviewed: | 2/6/2002 |
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| Keywords: | kbDiskMemory KB124917 |
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