Defragmenting help needed

[N4865G]

Hallo Gents,I tend to defrag my hard drive frequently, but at least once a week.I use winXP defrag utility.I know there are payware utilities out there, but I do not really feel this is justified to pay for something like that - I might be wrong though.I have one physical drive with 2 partitions: C and D.I have them split equally (20GB each moreless) and I keep my OS on drive C along with other Program files and I have my FS folders on the D partition.Over the months (I reinstalled my OS and FS almost 9 months ago) my drives look like that:Drive C:http://forums.avsim.net/user_files/140889.jpgand drive D:http://forums.avsim.net/user_files/140890.jpgAs I am by no means expert on these matters I would ask for your opinion - does it look normal to you, or should this be improved for better FS performance (I particularily mean those separated blocks of data - shouldn't they be as a one single block?)Truly appreciate your time to share your comments,Regards,Dom

[Guest baksteen33]

Hi Dom, the blank bits inbetween the data are the Master File Tables (MFT). By default, they occupy 25% of the partition's free space. As you probably know, the green bits on C are the pagefile. As you also guessed, the HD-heads will 'jump' when going from one bit of the partition to the other. Ideally, we would avoid this from happening but that's almost impossible. :-) Nevertheless, having the OS and FS on different partitions (w/ 1 HD), will increase the likelyness of such head jumps. Therefore, on single HD systems, it's probably best to have everything in one large partition. Unfortunately, MS' defragger isn't very informative about which data is where. If you wish, I could try to dig up a couple of infos and links. Hope this adds to thoughts, good luck and kind regards Jaap

[N4865G]

Jaap,Very informative indeed.My question was really aimed at making sure my system is where it should be.There are people swearing by keeping the FS on another partition and yet there are others claiming otherwise - go figure.If you think my data is in order I'll leave it as is.Thank you for your help - much appreciated Jaap,Dom