I was wondering if anyone could answer this question. I have an 80gig WD drive with less then 20 gig used. When I do a defrag, the files seem to be divided into 3 seperate chunks with large amounts of free space in between. For example, the window that shows the colored bars representing files would look something like this: ||| ||||| || The lines represent files and space represents, well, space. Why would the drive be divided up like this? Wouldn't this make the drive slower as opposed to putting everything together to access it quicker? Asus K8V-X Athlon 64 2800+ ATI AIW 9600XT 512 PC3200 WD 80 GIG HP CD-RW LG DVD Send me your unwanted computer parts!

Lets try this again, the way this board formats, all the line went together | = files * = free space So the drive window after defrag would look like this ||||*******|||*******|||| Hope it makes sense. Asus K8V-X Athlon 64 2800+ ATI AIW 9600XT 512 PC3200 WD 80 GIG HP CD-RW LG DVD Send me your unwanted computer parts!

An issue I have noticed, and not found an answer to. Furthermore, if you defrag, write one large file, and examine the disk again, that file is spread all over the place, ignoring contiguous free areas. So add my call for enlightenment to yours!

If the white free space chuck is bothering you (I've ignored it long ago), try defrag in safe mode. Just remember it’s the file system, not Disk Defragmenter, that takes care of all data movement. BTW what the file system does don't make the drive slower. i_XpUser

I've always used the defragger in Norton Tools since back in the DOS days. As a rule of thumb it's always been faster than anything windows had in it. With my newest PC (bought last Oct) I discovered it won't defrag my C: drive. Since then I've been using Norton SpeedDisk on D: and the windows defrag on C:. I noticed the spaces you mentioned in the windows defrag. There have never been any such free spaces in Norton SpeedDisk. When it (SpeedDisk) is done defragging, the free space is always behind the data. My conclusion is this is just how the windows defrag represents the data and isn't "gospel" on data placement on the drive. As XpUser does, I just ignore it. To be honest, either graphical representation is moot anyhow as it really has nothing to do with how the data is pysically store on the HDD. It's just there to give you a "visual" (for lack of a better term) of what's going on that you can understand.

Personally I like some free space interspersed between the data blocks. IMO scruching up all the data to the front of the drive is not advantages. When one of the files near the front of the drive is changed, you end up with part of it at the very end of the data on the drive. That's a bad fragmentation. The object of defragging should be the files themselves, not the whole drive. Sorry, I do not check for private messages

Ok makes sense. Thanks for the help everyone. Asus K8V-X Athlon 64 2800+ ATI AIW 9600XT 512 PC3200 WD 80 GIG HP CD-RW LG DVD Send me your unwanted computer parts!