ABSTRACT
Some vendors tout a feature that is said to go beyond defragmentation. Known as disk optimization or file optimization, it is said to reduce the time it takes to recover data from disks as well as the time it takes to defragment. Disk optimization involves the intelligent placement of files on a disk in order to minimize head movement and process read/writes faster. It is an intriguing theory that software developers have flirted with for over a decade — improving performance by strategically positioning files. But, how effective is it in the real world? For the average consumer on a low-end PC, optimization appears to produce some benefit. Where it may fall short, however, is in the enterprise. The simpler the disk I/O model, the greater the potential for achieving some type of improvement in performance from optimization. With regard to RAID and enterprise environments, however, disk optimization begins to look a little shaky. According to some experts, optimization may sometimes reduce performance in the enterprise due to the resources used to optimize a disk as well as the complexity of modern disk architectures.
