Many administrators believe fragmentation is a problem that has gone away, but the truth is this: it’s a bigger issue today than ever. Due to the growth in file sizes, today files fragment more easily. Today’s users create and keep greater numbers of files, increasing the number of opportunities for deletes and fragmented writes. With today’s files being written to and being read at higher rates, the accumulation rate for fragmentation is faster, too.

So fragmentation is still happening in your system, and more so than ever. Let’s look at some of the direct negative effects on system performance and reliability.

Ideally, all your program and data files would be stored in contiguous form on your hard drive. Your system would be stable as a result and performing at peak efficiency. But if fragmentation occurs – and it does unless you prevent it – the moment that file is broken into pieces and scattered across the hard drive you have an open door to a number of problems.

The most obvious is performance. If you are noticing reduced application speed, lengthy backup times, increased application response times, and increased application load times – if the system is “slowing down” – you may well be looking at disk fragmentation.

Within your server operating system, every I/O request demands about nine separate steps. Even a simple user operation can require a number of I/O requests. Fragmented file data increases the amount of disk activity that’s necessary for every single one of these I/Os. Here is a multiplying effect that’s capable of slowing down the performance of your system enormously. Enough fragmented files, and you increase data manipulation times to the point where the delay is visible to end-users.

Disk fragmentation also results in reliability issues. Having just a few key files fragmented can lead to crashes, conflicts and errors. Where I/O activity is under pressure due to demands on the system, fragmentation can compound that pressure. Faulty device drivers or file filters that might otherwise operate effectively are exposed to the additional stress of fragmentation and it’s the last straw: they fail.

The following are the most common reliability and stability problems traceable to disk fragmentation:
1. Crashes and system hangs or system freezes
2. Slow and failed boot-ups
3. Slow and aborted backups
4. File corruption and data losses
5. Errors in programs
6. RAM use and cache problems
7. Hard drive failures

Defragmentation helps you avoid all these unnecessary ill effects. It has been automated for years by Diskeeper Corporation’s defragmentation applications, designed for use on systems ranging from individual workstations to enterprise servers. But today Diskeeper Corporation offers a solution that’s better yet.

By the time fragmentation has occurred, your system has already wasted precious I/O resources by writing those fragmented files to cluttered spaces on the disk. The only real solution is to prevent fragmentation from happening in the first place, and Diskeeper® 2010 performance software does exactly that. The result: clean disks on servers, workstations and laptops that result in better speed and efficiency, with systems lasting years longer due to reduced drive wear.

It may look like fragmentation is here to stay. But that’s only up to the point where you prevent it from happening in the first place.

Author Bio: Colleen Toumayan is the VP Public Relations for Diskeeper Corporation. Diskeeper Corporation can be found at http://www.diskeeper.com

Category: Computers and Technology
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