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Q124917: How Disk Defragmenter Reports Fragmentation

Article: Q124917
Product(s): Microsoft Windows 95.x Retail Product
Version(s): 
Operating System(s): 
Keyword(s): diskmem win95 kbDiskMemory
Last Modified: 06-FEB-2002

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The information in this article applies to:

- Microsoft Windows 95 
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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.


Additional query words: defrag.exe defrag

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Keywords          : diskmem win95 kbDiskMemory 
Technology        : kbWin95search kbZNotKeyword3
Version           : :

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