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Defrag98: Windows 98 Disk Defragmenter Simulator Online

defrag98.com

31–40 of 68 posts

Re: Defrag98: Windows 98 Disk Defragmenter Simulator Online

#31

What were the major filesystem technology improvements that made this redundant?

I think NTFS and SSD disks.

Fragmentation is an issue with any file system. SSDs dramatically reduce the cost of fragmentation but do not eliminate it, as non-sequential access is still slower than sequential access.

Re: Defrag98: Windows 98 Disk Defragmenter Simulator Online

#33
post #16
post #5

My computer's definitely gonna be faster after this.

I do laugh in that in all the times I ever did this for real (even back to my massive 170MB drive), it never felt much faster.

You probably defragged frequently enough. You would definitely notice it if a file system got fragmented enough.

Re: Defrag98: Windows 98 Disk Defragmenter Simulator Online

#34

When I was younger, my friends and I joked about making a "Disk Fragmenter" which would enumerate through every file on the disk and split them into non-contiguous clusters to make sure that the actuator arm on your platter-drive gets a PROPER WORKOUT TO FEEL THE BURN.

Such tools really exist and they're used for testing file systems, so that you have a more realistic "aged" layout on a freshly created test file systems. We also have memory fragmenters to do the same for memory for the same reasons.

Would those tools be primarily proprietary, or do some live in the open-source world too? I’d be interested in the techniques they use to aim for realism there.

Admittedly I haven’t made much of a search, but various search engines and autocorrects seem really convinced that I mean “defragmenter” instead of “fragmenter,” despite myself…

Re: Defrag98: Windows 98 Disk Defragmenter Simulator Online

#36
I recall there being some techno-mysticism surrounding defragging regarding how often and when it was necessary, what it did and didn’t help, etc. I also remember the claim “Macs don’t need defragging” but I don’t know if HFS(+) was actually any less prone to fragmentation than FAT32 was. Companies like Symantec were happy to sell defragging tools to Mac users regardless.

Re: Defrag98: Windows 98 Disk Defragmenter Simulator Online

#38
post #19
post #13

Will need to degauss after this

What, you don't need the data any more? Or are you conflating screen degaussing?

We used to degauss the CRTs because it looked cool and there was nothing else to do. Very adjacent to watching the defrag window maximised.

I did it in computer lab and showed others and the teacher lost it, thought we were breaking things.

Re: Defrag98: Windows 98 Disk Defragmenter Simulator Online

#40
post #16
post #5

My computer's definitely gonna be faster after this.

I do laugh in that in all the times I ever did this for real (even back to my massive 170MB drive), it never felt much faster.

At that point, you had to deal with questions of interleave.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interleaving_(disk_storage)

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