How Disk Defragmenter Reports Fragmentation

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This article was previously published under Q124917

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SYMPTOMS

When you run Microsoft Disk Defragmenter a second time immediately after defragmenting your hard disk, it reports that a small percentage of fragmentation still exists.

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Disk Defragenter reports that it is unnecessary to defragment your hard disk if the fragmentation level is below 10 percent.

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CAUSE

The following information applies to physical drives only:

Disk Defragmenter examines your disk directories and creates a database of files and their associated clusters. For Windows 95 Disk Defragmenter to identify these files as unmovable, they are marked with Hidden and System attributes. These unmovable file clusters, along with any bad sectors, can cause contiguous files to be interrupted by one or more clusters. This interruption, although negligible to the performance of the drive, is still considered a degree of fragmentation and is reported as such.

These symptoms may also occur if you select Consolidate Free Space Only under Advanced Options without ever performing a "Full defragmentation (both files and free space)."

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MORE INFORMATION

Disk Defragmenter is designed to work this way; therefore, this behavior requires no workaround.

NOTE: You should NEVER remove the attributes from mounted CVFs and defragment the HOST under Windows 95.

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APPLIES TO

Microsoft Windows 95

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kbdiskmemory KB124917

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Retired KB Content Disclaimer

This article was written about products for which Microsoft no longer offers support. Therefore, this article is offered "as is" and will no longer be updated.

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