Defrag + sort files alphabetically according to their path?

[thoste]

Is there a way to defrag + sort the files alphabetically according to their path+filesname?

 

If not: Can this feature be added to the next release?

 

Thank you

Thomas

[Augeas]

What benefit do you think this will achieve?

[thoste]

What benefit do you think this will achieve?

 

It is likely that all files which are put in one directory are used together.

So if I call e.g. prgm in

 

D:\aaa\bbb\ccc\myprog.exe

 

will use a log file in

 

D:\aaa\bbb\ccc\myprog.log

 

If they are both in the same (or neighbor) sector the access is faster.

The hard disc head is not forced to move/jump across the hard disc

 

So again: Is Defraggler somehow able to group files according to their path?

[Augeas]

If you use Prefetch, then the files associated with a particular program will be defragged and placed contiguously on disk, but not necessarily at the start or anywhere.

 

Prefetch will also preload associated files when a program is executed, so there is no need to place them in a 'fast' position.

 

In general, the operating system does not know where files are. So contiguously held files will not necessarily be read in one head movement. The file system will have to read the MFT to find the location of file 1, fetch it, open it, discover that it needs file 2, return to the MFT to find the location of file 2 etc. And in between read and write all those Windows logs, journals, a/v logs, temp files, page and hiber files, prefetch data, disk checkpoints etc. Then we have the disk controller batching I/O requests to reduce head movement.

 

This is a hugely simplified guess at a hugely complex process, I just don't think that disk heads stop where they are hoovering up files one after another.

[redhawk]

If they are both in the same (or neighbor) sector the access is faster.

That scenario is only applicable to "unbuffered sector read" which is never used for file access anyway.

All hard drives have built-in cache memory because they can read faster than Windows can collect and process the data.

So basically placement of files doesn't hinder performance as long as they're contiguous, however if all your files were badly fragmented then performance could drop.

 

Richard S.