alt Hacker News>defragmentation
Windows has had built in defrag since at least WinXP. I can't remember if Win2000 had it - I think it did. It runs in the background and you don't have to worry about it. 3rd party defrag tools are snake oil, like registry cleaners and so on.
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speed_spread • today at 2:44 PM
IIRC W2K didn't have one. Defragmentation can use different strategies which may impact the time it takes and additional perf gains if the right files are next to each other. The builtin defrag tool doesn't give any option. So "snake oil" I'm not so sure.
Also, a watching a proper defragmenter run was an OCD soothing experience before we had stray kitten and powerwashing videos galore. I know I'm not alone with this experience.
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I'm pretty sure some versions of DOS had a defrag tool, or at least windows 9x had a DOS mode equivalent where you could see the block map getting moved around.