On Thu, 12 Apr 2001 at 12:00:01 +1000 Käö§ wrote:
> Yeah I get up to 500 or so each week, even though they are mostly
> 0-Byte in size they take up heaps of space on your HDD cause EVERY
> file is allocated a "Minimum" size on the HDD and collectively a few
> hundred can add up to a lot of wasted space,
I'm afraid this is not quite correct. The only physical space a
0-byte file takes up on your HD is the directory entry, which is
very little. It won't take up any data cluster.
> this is known as "Slack Space" and your defrag prog may give you stats
> of the amout of this space you have,
I'm afraid this is not correct, either. "Slack space" means the
wasted space resulting from a cluster being not fully used. It's the
difference of the cluster size and the actual space needed for the
*last* cluster of a file. If you have many small files
(single-cluster files), then the slack space would be large in
comparison to the actual file size. Since 0-byte files don't take up
any data cluster, however, it doesn't generate any slack space.
> As well as that when you run a defrag, it takes ages, because it's
> got so many more File-Entries on the HDD to process,
Not really. They may occupy directory entries, but there's no data
cluster to move.
> also same if you delete heaps of them at once, your machine may
> seem to "Hang" as the HDD re-writes hundreds or thousands of
> FAT-entries... ...just wait for it to finish gracefully!
As said, 0-byte files take up directory entries, but no FAT entries.
I'm not trying to say you shouldn't clean them up more often, nor am
I suggesting it's ok for RIT not to clean them up when appropriate
(when closing, e.g.), but your idea about how 0-byte files work on a
FAT/FAT32 system seems to be wrong.
As always, it might be me who is wrong. My apology if that's the
case and please do correct me.
--
Best regards,
Ming-Li
The Bat! 1.52 Beta/4 | Win2k SP1
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