>I think it would also make a HUGE difference if more and more people started TELLING people (anyone, but most especially MS and software houses that write related HD utilities) that fragmentation is very helpful for some applications - especially fast response situations! The axiom that fragmentation is universally bad needs to be challenged at every opportunity. It is that, more than anything else in my opinion, that holds software designers back from doing things WITH fragmentation rather than against fragmentation.

Windows 98 default fragmentation is supposed to arrange files in the order they are accessed. In other words, it may deliberately fragment a file, because the file is not accessed sequentially.

I think some background process does the required analysis, while the files are being accessed.

I don't know about other versions of Windows.

I never use this; it takes much too long. I change the defragmentation to the second option, which is very similar to the option available in Windows 95.

Hilmar.