WEBVTT

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back in the day defragmenting a hard drive was computers 101 it was something

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that even lots of non-tech people knew was a good idea because if you didn't

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your computer would take forever to find all the different pieces of the file

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that you wanted scattered all around your drive then you'd get really annoyed

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and violate your parole again but it's actually been a while since remembering

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to manually defrag your system has been all that important and let's get the

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really obvious reason out of the way first ssds are more common than ever and

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because they can access all of that data that's spread around in different parts

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of the disk it's more or less the same time defragmenting them is unnecessary

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and in fact can even be harmful for the drive because defragmenting uses up

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those precious right Cycles which are very much limited your SSD has a finite

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number of those before I mean you might still be able to read

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it but you're not going to write anything else but let's say you're using

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mechanical hard drives for inexpensive mass storage for running a server or

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just because you enjoy how chunky they are well it turns out that you can

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probably get away with not defragging your drive for longer than you used to

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but why modern file systems have a few different tricks to stop fragmentation

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before it even happens on mechanical drives a big one is the use of something

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called an extent which is pretty easy to understand conceptually actually it's

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just a continuous area of the disk reserved for one specific file this way

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as data is added to the file it has pre-allocated space where that data can

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go instead of being fragmented and thrown all over the disc platter pretty

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much every major current file system uses extends including NTFS which is

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what Windows uses however the versions of Windows prior to XP meant mainly for

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consumers you know the ones that were still based on MS-DOS still use the more

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dated file systems fat 16 and FAT32

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which had limited or no support for extends making file fragmentation much

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more common another simple but not automatic trick you can try is

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compression file compression works by expressing longer strings of data as

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shorter strings kind of like how you can use an acronym instead of pronouncing

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the full name of whatever it is you're talking about the primary benefit of

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compression is to save disk space but it can also reduce fragmentation because

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the gaps it leaves for new files are larger meaning that they're less likely

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to be fragmented at all newer versions of Windows make it easy to compress an

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entire drive with just one click but be warned that depending on what kind of

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data you have in your drive and how fast or slow the rest your computer is your

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results can vary significantly since compressing and then decompressing files

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when you open them back up puts some load on your CPU and if you have lots of

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large files compressing can actually make fragmentation worse making

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compression more of a try it and see kind of solution but there are a couple

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of more interesting techniques that you can benefit from especially if you're a

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Mac or Linux user we'll tell you about those right after we thank Ridge for sponsoring this video simple yet elegant

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theft because the ridge wallet is made with premium RFID blocking materials

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they even offer a lifetime warranty if you're selling the fence just try it out

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the team over at the ridge are so confident that you'll love their product they've offered a 45-day test drive

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period if you're unsatisfied simply send the wallet back for a full refund the

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rage anniversary sale is happening now until March 24th so check them out at

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the link below one really cool feature is delayed allocation or allocate on

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flush if you want a name that's frankly crappier is a cool tactic that involves

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holding the data that's going to be written on the drive in memory before

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it's transferred to the disk while it's being held either in the hard drives

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cache itself or in system RAM the file system works to reserve those contiguous

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blocks of storage and the data isn't actually written until that outside

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memory either or fills up or the operating system is ready to write it

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this has the effect of keeping files less fragmented and is a Hallmark of

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file systems like apfs which is used by Apple as well as ext4 common among Linux

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users but speaking of Apple they were kind of famous for making claims that

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macOS hard drives somehow didn't need to be defragmented and this was because

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of a feature called transparent defragmentation in h of S Plus where

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files below a certain size would be defragmented automatically when you open

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them up although this would obviously take a little time it would speed things

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up the next time you needed the file and of course make things less painful if

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you went a long time since your last manual defrag which they actually made

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kind of difficult to do of course none of this is to say that you shouldn't be

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manually defragmenting your mechanical drives every now and again or you know

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doing it on schedule but these days it's just not as big of a deal if you forget

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I wish I could say the same about filing my taxes it is tax season isn't it

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thanks for watching guys like dislike check out some of our other videos maybe

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with video suggestions down below and don't forget to subscribe and follow