What are fragmented files and contiguous files and why are some files unmoveable?
Files in your system are stored as a linked list of ‘clusters’ of data on your HD. Although from the point of view of efficient working of the hard discs, it’s ideal to store these files in clusters lying next to each other, file systems can hardly achieve that in a real life scenario. Frequent creation and deletion of files result in having to fragment the files and store them in non contiguous clusters across the HD space.This is called fragmentation. Over continuous adding, removing and editing of files, more files get divided into fragments and get scattered across the HD. The HD being a mechanical device has to move its head each time to a different track instead of reading the clusters in a sequential manner thus causing slow down of applications. For instance when a file is copied or transferred, if it’s fragmented, it would take longer to read the same file as compared to when it’s located contiguously.Lesser the fragmentation, the better the performance. Unmoveable files are t
