Naturally by defragmenting there should be increase in free space but when I defragmented my free space decreased by 10 GB nearly why it happened? Any one over there can help me?
1 Answer
Defragmenting shouldn't effect free space that way - it simply moves files around on the disk in attempt that full files appear sequentially on the disk rather than scattered in fragments all over the disk.
Chances are, you're probably looking at the creation of temporary files, system restore points or volume shadow copies created as the result of defragmenting.
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2There may be increase in free space, actually. As process consolidates files, there is better usage of storage space on the hard drive - files are being written continuously throughout the clusters, instead of being stored piecemeal on the whole drive. Admittedly, this would not be much (megabytes maybe)...– AcePLFeb 20, 2015 at 9:46
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1Sure, but that isn't the purpose of the defragmentation tool. I didn't say "shouldn't" :)– FlykFeb 20, 2015 at 9:47
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Aha! Trying to word-trap? ;) I've seen original version of answer. Now is much better. I'd recommend "Shouldn't effect free space that way"...– AcePLFeb 20, 2015 at 9:50
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1No source, just knowledge how HDDs work. I know it's counterintuitive, but can happen. For instance - mentioned huge number of small files, or heavily fragmented large files sometimes cause MFT to spill over to the workspace of HDD. If you defragment, it gets removed. Also there are reverse effects of causes mentioned by Flyk ;)– AcePLFeb 20, 2015 at 10:02
Naturally by defragmenting there should be increase in free space
- er, no! Very simply: defragmentation reduces the amount of fragmentation by physically moving content on the disk so each piece of a single file are closer together and ideally contiguously.