Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!helios.ee.lbl.gov!pasteur!ucbvax!vax1.physics.oxford.ac.UK!MACALLSTR
From: MACALLSTR@vax1.physics.oxford.ac.UK
Newsgroups: comp.os.vms
Subject: Disk defragmenters.
Message-ID: <8806282211.AA01437@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU>
Date: 28 Jun 88 22:12:23 GMT
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 13
X-Unparsable-Date: 16-JUN-1988 14:54:18 GMT +01:00

While disk defragmenters may only produce dramatic performance improvements
 on very badly fragmented disks ( usually disks with little free space ) for
 individual applications, you will a notice drop in BACKUP time after the
 disk has been defragmented. 
I have tried DISKEEPER and RABBIT-7 and am using RABBIT-7 mainly because at
 the time the decision was made ( about a year ago ) RABBIT-7 gave more
 flexibility. Anyone using disk defragmenting packages ought to be aware of
 what the package is doing to the arrangement of files on the disk ; free
 space may be concentrated in one chunk at the beginning/end/somewhere in 
 between of the disk or it may be divided into several separate chunks
 distributed over the disk. You must discover which formula suits your system :
 do you have many small/medium/large files or does the disk contain several
 large database files for example? 
John