Frankly speaking, in many situations the recovery of fragmented files is not something difficult to do, subject to availability of a relevant record about the file in the file system. In reality, the direct task of the file system is to store information about where and in which order sectors containing file’s contents are located on the disk. That is why recovering recently deleted file won’t be a problem.Here lies the main difficulty. Signature-based algorithms depend in their work on file header structure, by analysing which it can determine size of a file. Having got the information about header location and knowing the exact file size, programs locate sectors on a disk that, they believe, contain file data.
Have you noticed inconsistency? Correct: such algorithms will work correctly only when the entire file is stored as a single continuous fragment. If the file was saved as a multiple scattered fragments, its recovery without record in the file system will be extremely difficult, practically impossible. It would be easier to take a number of simple actions to prevent or minimize fragmentation.
Preventing disk fragmentation
Fragmentation can be prevented by taking fairly simply actions.
Firstly, monitor free space on disk. If there is sufficient free space Windows will not have any reason to write files as a separate fragments. Of course, some fragmentation will be there, but it won’t be a threat.
Secondly, use defragmenter regularly. Beginning with Vista, Windows operating system comes along with a fairly good defragmenter. Launch it and check the number of fragmented files. Having done that, schedule defragmenter’s automatic launch – it is simple enough and can be done by accessing a relevant program’s menu. Daily or weekly launch will suffice, but make sure that computer will be on during the scheduled launch of defragmenter.
