What is the purpose of a defragmentation program?
When a file is created, MS-DOS tries to store all of the data end to end in a contiguous location on the disk. As other files are created, they are placed immediately behind the previously created file. However, if a file is subsequently modified, it may need more disk space than it originally got. If MS-DOS cannot find enough contiguous space to hold the modified file, it stores the excess in a noncontiguous location. This concept is illustrated below using numbers to represent a file clusters: 1111111 When file 1 is first created, all of its clusters are contiguous. 1111111222222 When file 2 is created, it is placed right behind file 1 and is still contiguous. 111111122222211 If the size of file 1 is later increased, its clusters must be separated because file 2’s clusters are in the way and there is no room to store all of file 1’s clusters together. This separation of a file’s parts, called fragmentation, is not a big problem because the FAT maintains a record of the location of ea
