Defrag question

[tacoeater]

What type of files are the ones which are the dark green in the legend and labeled "belong at end of drive". Are they rarely used files or something else?
thanks,
alan

[Gizmo]

There should be a key reference to the colours that you see that will explain what those files are. I'm not quite sure what "At the end of drive" means.

[tacoeater]

the colors are the legend i refer to.
there were no problems.
when you click legend during a Win9x defrag it tells you what the colors are.
i asked about dark green.
dark green says files that belong at end of drive.
i asked what kind of files these might be.

[GaryRouth]

I've never seen a good explanation for that category of files (marked dark green in the legend) that "belong at end of drive". So I'd be interested to hear the answer also.

It's easy to know what needs loading first (usually moved to the outer tracks of the hard drive, where access is the fastest per spin) - those are the files needed for your most used programs to load.

The closest I could come to any details on Defragmenter was the article "How to Determine the Programs Disk Defragmenter Optimizes"
http://support.microsoft.com/default...20&Product=w98

. . . but it doesn't really answer the end of drive question
. . . Gary

[tacoeater]

thanks gary,
i read the link and will look at the optimize log just for fun.
anyone else know anything about the end of drive files?

[GaryRouth]

Found another nicely written article with one of the clearest explanations around on how Win9x Defragmenters work with the AppLog: http://personal-computer-tutor.com/abc4/v36/vic36.htm

After thinking about it, I'm going to guess that since there are so few of those little dark green clusters [I rarely see more than one or two, and most often none at all] - perhaps these are "lost clusters" from a ScanDisk run that were saved as files (rather than "deleted" & marked as "available" free space again). It would make sense that these orphans aren't going to be needed in any great hurry, so why not put them at the back of the line. My other guess would be some sort of extra copy of a file directory or file table. . .

Pretty obvious that I'm guessing!
. . . Gary

[I'll bet glc or Hal know, and are waiting to see how many wrong guesses I make before they lift the veil of arcane defraggery ]

[tacoeater]

well the computer which spur'd my interest in this had several pages of these dark green monsters. if i never find out exactly it will be ok i just love to know little gems like this so i can weave them into conversations here and there.
thanks again.
haven't read your latest link yet but i will.
alan
ok gary, lots of nice reading and tips etc. joined the yahoo group to see what goodies they have as well.
thanks again

[glc]

I'm guessing here - but it might be the files that the applog thinks should belong there. Do an experiment - delete the entire contents of c:\windows\applog - and start a defrag. If the number of dark green clusters goes away or is reduced significantly, that's what it was. Your defrag will go a LOT faster if you delete the applog anyway.

[tacoeater]

glc
your hunch was correct. i was burning the midnight oil last night and the link gary gave suggested deleting the applog and rebooting a few times. there were indeed just a few dark green squares when i ran defrag again and it was faster, much faster. of course i always do the unsupported medefrag with 98 and that helps faster also.
anyone know why microsffft doesn't want us to use the me defrag with 98 anymore?
thanks
alan