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Date: Thu, 28 Aug 2008 13:41:22 +0200 (CEST)
From: Wojciech Puchar <wojtek@wojtek.tensor.gdynia.pl>
To: Eduardo Morras <emorras@xroff.net>
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Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org
Subject: Re: defrag
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> No, if you check a NTFS disk after some work, it's heavily fragmented. As you 
> fill it and work with it, it becomes more and more fragmented.

it's just like FAT, because nothing is done to prevent fragmentation.

if NTFS needs to allocate block, it simply get first free.

consider writing to 3 files, one block at a time to each.

you will get block arranged like this (where 1 is file 1's data,2 is data 
from file 2 and 3 from file 3):

123123123123123123123123213213


with newer systems with lots of memory windoze POSSIBLY delays allocation, 
so it may somehow prevent allocation if these files are written within 
short period.

but there is no real thing, as simple and efficient as in BSD UFS.

> The best way to defragment a NTFS drive is make a backup to other device, 
> format the original and recover the backup. It take less time and device 
> don't suffer. I do it monthly with the data disks and performance grows 
> espectacularly (near x4 on sustained  file read).

did they finally "managed" to be able to backup everything just by copying 
files like in unix?

is there any way to restore it without doing windoze installation on blank 
drive?