Diskeeper white paper sample

How Performance Suffers Because of Fragmentation

In simple terms, fragmentation occurs when users create, delete, and resize computer files on their hard disks. The continual creation and deletion of files causes file segments originally created in a continuous block to be scattered, or fragmented, into many pieces over time. The more fragmented the pieces become, the longer it takes for the computer to read the files, and overall system performance degrades.

A common analogy for fragmentation is to imagine a customer file that has been split among 20 filing cabinets. It would probably be easier to place the information into one cabinet. That's the job of the defragmenter.

Excessive disk fragmentation can create substantial performance degradation on both servers and workstations across a site. Some companies, unaware of the impact, may resolve such a performance impact with more expensive acquisitions of higher-performance hardware. However, it is just a matter of time before fragmentation impacts the new machines because this process only temporarily masks the performance problem. Therefore, an enterprise can address performance slowdowns without hardware purchases by instituting automatic defragmentation software rather than relying exclusively on more costly hardware upgrades to increase system performance.