Disk Defragmentation and Enfragmentation (FAT tool/toy)

Do you frequently defragment your disk, only to find that the file system does not need defragmentation, thereby ruining your tech-oriented mood? I present you, the Enfragmentation tool. It fragments the filesystem, so that defrag can be run again.
It is a meaningless toy that I wrote in 1998. I never released it, and consequently never bothered to fix some bugs in it. In this video I ran it three times for extra gusto, and on the third time it damaged some innocent file that Microsoft Scandisk fixes to the best of its abilities. Enfrag also never updates the second FAT table, so Scandisk/chkdsk/dosfsck always has to fix it after Enfrag has been run.

Microsoft Windows 3.11 (Windows for Workgroups) also makes an appearance. I run it in the beginning to show how system-oriented stuff used to be managed from MS-DOS rather than from Windows, and in the end to show that things still work. QBasic Nibbles crashes because the computer is too fast.

Implementation language: Borland Pascal
Source code: http://bisqwit.iki.fi/jutut/kuvat/programming_examples/enfrag.pas and executable (enfrag.exe)
Provided AS-IS. If you destroy your files with it, I won't be held responsible. Also, it only works for FAT12 and FAT16 volumes (not FAT32, not NTFS).

P.S. There is no sound in this video. Normally, when you defragment the disk, you will hear a lot of noise from your harddisk that provides the aural entertainment to counterpart the visual entertainment, but because this video was created in a virtual machine, there was no harddisk that would make the noises. I could have simulated them in post-process, but there is a limit to the amount of expenditure of effort even for me...

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• Defragmentation
• defrag
• MS-DOS
• Enfragmentation
• enfrag
• Refragmentation
• refrag
• technology
• FAT
• File System
• Computer
• File Allocation Table
• toy
• algorithm
• Borland Pascal
• Joel Yliluoma
• Windows For Workgroups
• Microsoft

[WarpRulez]

Microsoft's defrag did quite a poor job back then, and it hasn't improved by much since. It only cares about putting individual files into consecutive locations on disk, but that's it. It doesn't care how related files are scattered. File seek times suffer.

There exist much more advanced third-party defragmenters that will not only defrag files, but also physically sort them by directory, so that all files in the same directories (and their subdirectories) are in consecutive locations on disk.

[Bisqwit]

@WarpRulez The MS-DOS Defrag from Microsoft was actually licensed from Symantec (who acquired it from buying Peter Norton Computing Inc. in 1990. Defrag = Norton Speedisk.).

But a competitor to Symantec, Central Point Software, had another defragmentation program in their "PC Tools" suite. I used their defragmentation program on a Tandy 1000 some time in the 1990s, and I should still have a copy, but I cannot seem to find it. It was nice. Symantec actually bought PC Tools from CPS in 2008.

[Xkeeper0]

One thing I want to know is how you managed to get bad clusters. This is a virtual device, not some ancient crippled hardware, what happened?

[Bisqwit]

@Xkeeper0 It is real hardware that has been virtualized.

[labobo]

Pascal oh my that brings back memories, i do really not miss it. The bios system usage docs alone where horrible.

Though not much have changed when it comes to docs, docs are still bad (msdn documentation) but at least today you can google and e-mail for the answer.

Or reverse engineer the binaries (for api call info) somewhat easily if forced to..

[Bisqwit]

@labobo I don't find particular problem with the level of documentation back then. At least if you had a few good books and Ralf Brown's Interrupt list. But I share the sentiment of not missing Turbo Pascal. For last 10 years I haven't done pretty much anything else with TP/BP than to maintain existing programs against bit-rot. There simply was no advantage in trying to use Pascal compilers after I began using Linux.

[oEQjet]

@TheGNUfan I’d just like to interject for a moment. What you’re refering to as 'GNU/that', is in fact, GNU/GNU/that, or as I’ve recently taken to calling it, GNU plus GNU plus that. GNU plus universe is not a reality unto itself, but rather a free component of a fully functioning GNU plus GNU system made useful by the GNU corelibs, shell utilities and vital system components plus the GNU corelibs, shell utilities, and vital system components, which fulfills the POSIX specification.

[Xkeeper0]

Also I've never had Nibbles crash on me for what it's worth, it just ran stupidly fast. I wonder if I had some bizarre updated version or something...

[Xkeeper0]

@TheGNUfan Yay for Linux zealots!

[LunaVorax]

Once again, really cool video :)

I still have a working copy of Windows 3.11 (for Workgroup). Unfortunately it's a pirated one.

On the other hand I have original copies of MS-DOS 6.22 and Windows 95 A/B/C.

But to be honnest, I prefer Linux and FreeDOS.