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[King Zultan]

I've only had a computer blue screen once and it was a computer that died when it was defragged.

[Bumber]

I've only had a computer blue screen once and it was a computer that died when it was defragged.

Did you frag your computer by accident?

[Tingle]

GRENADE OUT!

[King Zultan]

I've only had a computer blue screen once and it was a computer that died when it was defragged.

Did you frag your computer by accident?

Na it was a beat up piece crap, and apparently that shoved it over the edge.

[Naturegirl1999]

Does defragging mean defragmentation? If so, how does a computer get fragmented?

[Reelya]

When you save a file on your computer, it's stored in blocks. The blocks don't need to be in a row. Often if you store a big file, there won't be enough space to store it in one set of blocks so it's spread out. Stuff ends up scattered all over the disk as things are moved, added and deleted. Basically because they don't fit. Think of it like file tetris. Imagine if you delete a file, which leaves a gap, then you replace it with another file, but the new file is either bigger or smaller than the old file. If it's smaller, then you've added an extra gap in between the files, and if it's bigger then it needs to be split into two pieces. If you then delete the other file that's between those two pieces, you end up with chunks of file all other the place.

it doesn't matter if there are chunks if you don't read the files very often, but for files that are frequently accessed then being fragmented causes wear and tear since the magnetic read head of the drive needs to move around a lot more. So, if you have a drive full of movie rips or audio files then you shouldn't ever defragment that, since the bit-rate of video or audio is much lower than the read-rate of the drive. Defragging moves a lot of data around, so it in itself can cause wear and tear. But if you have a drive full of installed games and applications then you should probably defrag it now and then, unless it's SSD, in which case, don't defrag it very often. SSDs are random-access memory so files being broken up doesn't impact their performance.

[Naturegirl1999]

Thank you, so it’s possible to merge smaller files into a larger file? Or did I misinterpret something?

[NullForceOmega]

It takes the small blocks and combines them into a larger block, allowing for the information to be read more easily, and can help when installing new files by opening up larger areas of clear memory for use.  It can sometimes reduce the 'footprint' of installed files also, but rarely by any meaningful amount.

[Tack]

Thank you, so it’s possible to merge smaller files into a larger file? Or did I misinterpret something?

More like “half of the files go on this part of the vinyl record, and the other half of the files go where there’s space, so over on the other side.”
So the wear and tear happens when it needs to read the bit on this side and then whip around to the other side in order to read the next bit.
Defragging finds all of the files which belong together and tries to put them all in the same place on the disk. I don’t think a single file is ever broken up.

Me WTF time, “fake news” edition.
I was reading an article online about the amount of chlorine in our drinking water, because I wondered if all these chlorine filters were selling a service or just selling words. Anywho, came across a site which basically boiled down to “there needs to be X chlorine in your water to kill germs, and above X chlorine is kinda bad for people, but having germs in your water would be worse.”
It ended with the phrase “So to sum up, it’s good that the government puts this amount of chlorine in your water, but it will likely reduce your cancer risk if you were to also filter what you drink”

Anywho I believed it. I mean, I made a cursory effort to see if it was a blog by Britta filters but apart from that I was fully on board.
It’s made me wonder if it’s a generational thing or just my exposures where I’m incredibly distrustful of partisan or hardline ideas, but much more willing to take moderate views at face values. If they had said “Raar Chlorine Bad” I would have probably just closed it and ignored it.

Anyone else find this? Does this make me susceptible to refusing to believe truths which may be radical or confronting?

[Mephisto]

The Tremors movie franchise is still ongoing as of last month. I don't know what to do with this news.

[JoshuaFH]

@ Tack: I mean, by the time you're drinking it, the chlorine has done its job, you don't need it anymore, so I suppose there's no harm in removing it. Besides, among the many carcinogenic things you encounter in daily life, the chlorine in your water is probably one of most negligible ones.

[TamerVirus]

The Tremors movie franchise is still ongoing as of last month.

Meanwhile a trailer dropped for another Saw sequel, this time starring Chris Rock and Samuel L Jackson

[overseer05-15]

@ Tack: I mean, by the time you're drinking it, the chlorine has done its job, you don't need it anymore, so I suppose there's no harm in removing it. Besides, among the many carcinogenic things you encounter in daily life, the chlorine in your water is probably one of most negligible ones.

When the biggest issue with the water is chlorine, it's a good day.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flint_water_crisis

[Frumple]

Man, look out the window to see if I wanted to bother the kittens, big ol' possum sitting there eating the cat food, pretty as you please. Chased it off with a broom handle, probably going to see if we still got a critter trap stashed away somewhere or another. Friggin' tree rat, go away =_=

[TamerVirus]

Did the possum feign death at any point?