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From: Vladimir Dergachev <vdergachev AT rcgardis DOT com>
To: cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
Subject: Re: NTFS fragmentation
Date: Thu, 3 Aug 2006 13:55:19 -0400
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On Thursday 03 August 2006 5:35 am, Christian Franke wrote:
> Vladimir Dergachev wrote:
> > ...
> > Also, I tried the following experiment - found a 17 MB file in
> > ibiblio.org and downloaded it with FireFox. The file ended up fragmented
> > into more than 200 pieces. Tried the same file with IE - no
> > fragmentation.
>
> The difference is probably that IE initially creates the file with full
> size and then overwrites it. This is at least the case if you copy files
> with explorer, copy, xcopy or CopyFileEx().
>
> FireFox, Cygwin's cp and most other programs use regular sequential
> write. This may lead to fragmentation when the disk has less space.

Well, what I see is that the file is completely fragmented on a 400 GB disk, 
which is 40% full and has been recently defragmented.

By completely fragmented I mean as if each write ends up in its own separate 
place on disk and NTFS does not even check whether there is free space after 
the last written block. Honestly, FAT was more efficient - at least when 
written anew there was no fragmentation.

                                best

                                    Vladimir Dergachev

>
> Christian



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