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TITLE: Optimizing a Server Hard drive
DOCUMENT ID#: FYI.P.6014
DATE: January 29, 1993
PRODUCT: NetWare Lite
PRODUCT VERSION: All versions
SUPERSEDES: NA
SYMPTOM: NA
ISSUE/PROBLEM
Optimizing a Server Hard drive
During the day to day work on your computer, files are deleted, rewritten, or replaced on the hard disk. This will eventually cause your files to be "fragmented". Fragmented refers to a file being divided into pieces and those pieces being located throughout your hard disk instead of in one contiguous block of disk space. Thus if you try and access one of these files the hard disk has to look for a single file in several places. This in turn causes your hard disk to respond slowly. The more fragmented your disk is, the slower it will respond. If the hard disk is in a NetWare Lite server the entire network can be affected. To eliminate this effect consider "optimizing" you hard disk. A disk is optimized by rearranging the data so that files are not spread out over the disk. There are many different utilities available for optimizing hard disks.
Note:
It is vital that no other stations access your hard disk while the utility is running.
Disk Optimizers can take a considerable amount of time to complete data arrangement. (20 minutes or more)
It is recommended that you have a backup of your vital information before optimizing.
If your hard disk is in a NetWare Lite server, the optimizing utility must be executed from the server itself and not from a client.
