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.
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…
The speed is determined by a simple 1000 / <iops> per disk (there's different disks if you click "Settings").
If you inspect and go to sources and look for "1e3 /" you'll find the line responsible, you can set a breakpoint and change e.disk.iops to 1000 which will make the timeout per row 1s instead of 2-4s, so the whole thing goes faster.
Typically it would be getting some bits from other parts of the drive and there would be a few (that many) bits it wouldn't move because they were the swap file and DOS boot system files.
I love it. A couple notes:
- This is about 10x a real defrag speed - WAAAY too fast
- IIRC the "Data that will not be moved" was typically lumped at the beginning of the drive, not spread out all over.
I'm a stickler for accuracy too. The defragged blocks in the original Win9x program weren't solid blue - they had a hatch pattern texture to them. I remember it way too vividly.
Source: Watching a disk defrag was every millenial kids equivalent of going to the laundromat and watching laundry tumble.
here is another version i found when googling these things that seems somewhat similar, but with a few more "accurate" features. also, has the source available in a single file.
FAT32 allocates the first free block. IIRC, file order must match disk order because reasons. Ext2 prioritized allocating the middle of free space to allow fragment-free growth on both sides and it became a standard filesystem feature after that.
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.
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…
LOL
There's something satisfying about defragging that has been lost to time. Like oiling a squeaky engine
I love this. I wanted the disk noise, and I got it. I will say that’s a lot faster than my drives were in the late 1990s though.
The speed is determined by a simple 1000 / <iops> per disk (there's different disks if you click "Settings").
If you inspect and go to sources and look for "1e3 /" you'll find the line responsible, you can set a breakpoint and change e.disk.iops to 1000 which will make the timeout per row 1s instead of 2-4s, so the whole thing goes faster.
It feels a little too defragmented to start.
Typically it would be getting some bits from other parts of the drive and there would be a few (that many) bits it wouldn't move because they were the swap file and DOS boot system files.
I love it. A couple notes: - This is about 10x a real defrag speed - WAAAY too fast - IIRC the "Data that will not be moved" was typically lumped at the beginning of the drive, not spread out all over.
I'm a stickler for accuracy too. The defragged blocks in the original Win9x program weren't solid blue - they had a hatch pattern texture to them. I remember it way too vividly.
Source: Watching a disk defrag was every millenial kids equivalent of going to the laundromat and watching laundry tumble.
https://youtu.be/dc_SDyLYq3U?t=347
I am guessing the developer took into account the fact that the younger generations these days don't have the patience for real time defragging.
author commenting on such things:
https://morello.dev/blog/defrag98-rebuild
what it looked like before
https://morello.dev/blog/windows-98-defrag-simulator
a previous discussion:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40962195
here is another version i found when googling these things that seems somewhat similar, but with a few more "accurate" features. also, has the source available in a single file.
https://horatioconkerhead.github.io/win98-defrag/
if you want the real deal, you can run windows 95 in the browser quick. it took running it a few times to get it to actually defrag:
https://archive.org/details/win95_in_dosbox
It could be spread out too
Defragmenting XFS is much less dramatic.
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)
You probably defragged frequently enough. You would definitely notice it if a file system got fragmented enough.
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.
Love the warning for using on a mobile device.
There is even a click noise when you idly tap the screen.
As great as it is, way too fast.
This scratched an itch for me.
I’m going to watch Johnny Castaway now.
4 Drives, 5.5G total. Luxury!
Per-drive individual sounds, and BSoD included. Nice touches, love it!
Need this but for AI models. Sleep mode where they self prune and optimize overnight for their daily purpose.
https://platform.claude.com/docs/en/managed-agents/dreams
My YouTube
I need to set up a Windows 95 computer with a hard drive and stream the defragging online, complete with live audio.
What were the major filesystem technology improvements that made this redundant?
FAT32 allocates the first free block. IIRC, file order must match disk order because reasons. Ext2 prioritized allocating the middle of free space to allow fragment-free growth on both sides and it became a standard filesystem feature after that.
I think NTFS and SSD disks.
Fragmentation is an issue in any file system. SSDs reduce the cost of fragmentation but do not eliminate it.
bill gates, I want my time back!
The sound killed me... :D
Legend
Brilliant. Whirring disk noise is nice touch.
If AI generated this is what the AI revolution is all about.
Can we get a cross platform screensaver?
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