>Hey Jim. Your four points seem, to me, to make the argument that fragmentation doesn't matter *as much* anymore because of system performance enhancements. But I am not sure that any of them negate the ol' "axiom"... in other words, I'd agree that the speed of modern systems just pushes off the manifestation of these issues until the disk is *really* fragmented (I am the first to admit I have not quantitative definition of "really" for that), or until you run some sort of process -- grabbing values from disk while in a long loop, for instance -- that really highlights the issue. But I'd imagine that there is still some effect.

OK, let me try "why are contiguous files considered so good" as compared to fragmented files. Again, keeping the points initially listed in mind.

It seems to me that in either a system with even a few concurrent processes underway (each using HD for user and temp files) or even a system running only a database application (using many tables, many of them largish), that contiguous files cause greater head movement (slowness) compared to the same files being fragmented (amongst each other).

Any new thoughts?
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>>I tried this in the CHATTER forum, but an absence of response prompts me to re-try here.
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>>Keeping in mind:
>>1) Modern Windows systems are multi-tasking systems.
>>2) Windows itself (and its components, like IE) make significant 'quiet' use of your HD space for all manner of files, large and small.
>>3) Other applications (MS Word for example) can use HD space 'quietly' too.
>>4) Modern HDs are fast, processors are faster yet, and RAM is plentiful.
>>... what hard facts are there to back up the axiom (it is essentially an axiom today) that fragmentation is bad?
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>>That fragmentation is bad is so prevalent a concept that I must be missing something obvious. What is it?
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>>Thanks for any/all input on this issue.
>>Jim Nelson