>By the way, my guess is that a Word or Excel file hardly has the chance to become fragmented because the whole is done in a single write, so there is virtually no chance for something else to intrude while it is written.
I think a Word or Excel file can very well become fragmented, because the available free space isn't necessarily contiguous. The missing piece of information for me, however, is: how does the operating system decide where to start writing the file? The first available cluster perhaps? That is a possibility, but I can also imagine several alternative algorithms.
Hilmar.
Difference in opinions hath cost many millions of lives: for instance, whether flesh be bread, or bread be flesh; whether whistling be a vice or a virtue; whether it be better to kiss a post, or throw it into the fire... (from Gulliver's Travels)
