Uploaded January 2021 | Updated September 2026, 1 week ago
This is something I loved watching as a kid. Seeing blocks changing colors without really knowing what was going on 🟥🟧🟨🟩🟦🟪🟫⬛⬜. It was said to speed up my computer. But really the computer I had was just not so high end, and while defragmentation certainly helped, it was more likely that the measly Celeron 433 CPU was the bottleneck to my YouTube watching experience 😉
-- Information from Wikipedia --
Microsoft Drive Optimizer (formerly Disk Defragmenter) is a utility in Microsoft Windows designed to increase data access speed by rearranging files stored on a disk to occupy contiguous storage locations, a technique called defragmentation. Defragmenting a disk minimizes head travel, which reduces the time it takes to read files from and write files to the disk. As a result of the decreased read and write times, Microsoft Drive Optimizer decreases system startup times for systems starting from magnetic storage devices such as a hard drive. However, defragmentation cannot be run on storage devices such as solid state drives, USB drives or SD cards that use flash memory to increase speeds, as these drives do not use a head. Defragmentation may decrease lifespan for certain technologies, e.g. solid state drives. Microsoft Drive Optimizer was first officially shipped with Windows XP.
From Windows 8, the program was renamed to Microsoft Drive Optimizer, with some references changed to say Defragment and Optimize Drives or simply Optimize Drives.
Early history
As early as the end of 1982, the IBM PC DOS operating system that shipped with early IBM Personal Computers included a Disk Volume Organization Optimizer to defragment the 5¼-inch floppy disks that those machines used. At this time, Microsoft's MS-DOS did not defragment hard disks. Several third party software developers marketed defragmenters to fill this gap. MS-DOS 6.0 introduced Microsoft Defrag. Windows NT, however, did not offer a Defrag utility, and Symantec was suggested by others as a possible alternative for the utility.
Initial releases of Windows NT lacked a defragmentation tool. Versions through Windows NT 3.51 did not have an application programming interface for moving data clusters on hard disks. Executive Software, later renamed Diskeeper Corporation, released Diskeeper defragmentation software for Windows NT 3.51, which shipped with a customized version of the NT kernel and file system drivers that could move clusters.
Microsoft included file system control (FSCTL) commands to move clusters in the Windows NT 4.0 kernel, which worked for both NTFS and FAT partitions. However, Windows NT 4.0 did not provide a graphical or command-line user interface.
Debut
Disk Defragmenter also shipped as part of Windows 95, Windows 98 and Windows Me. It could be scheduled using a Maintenance Wizard and supported command line switches. This version had the limitation that if the contents of the drive changed during defragmentation, it rescanned the drive and restarted the process from where it left off.
The Disk Defragmenter in Windows 2000 was a stripped-down licensed version of Diskeeper, licensed from Diskeeper Corporation. It uses the following techniques:
Moving all the index or directory information to one spot. Moving this spot into the center of the data, i.e. one third of the way in, so that average head travel to data is halved compared to having directory information at the front.
Moving infrequently used files further from the directory area.
Obeying a user-provided table of file descriptions to emphasize or ignore.
Making files contiguous so that they can be read without unnecessary seeking.
-- Timestamps --
0:00 Video Intro
0:10 Starting disk defragmentation
12:05 Again for good measure
13:08 Shut down
13:14 Outro
-- Settings and application information --
Used emulator: PCem v17
CPU: Pentium 120
OS: Windows 98 Second Edition
#Nostalgia #1990s #Vintage #Aesthetics
Website: nostalgiarealm.com
This is something I loved watching as a kid. Seeing blocks changing colors without really knowing what was going on 🟥🟧🟨🟩🟦🟪🟫⬛⬜. It was said to speed up my computer. But really the computer I had was just not so high end, and while defragmentation certainly helped, it was more likely that the measly Celeron 433 CPU was the bottleneck to my YouTube watching experience 😉
-- Information from Wikipedia --
Microsoft Drive Optimizer (formerly Disk Defragmenter) is a utility in Microsoft Windows designed to increase data access speed by rearranging files stored on a disk to occupy contiguous storage locations, a technique called defragmentation. Defragmenting a disk minimizes head travel, which reduces the time it takes to read files from and write files to the disk. As a result of the decreased read and write times, Microsoft Drive Optimizer decreases system startup times for systems starting from magnetic storage devices such as a hard drive. However, defragmentation cannot be run on storage devices such as solid state drives, USB drives or SD cards that use flash memory to increase speeds, as these drives do not use a head. Defragmentation may decrease lifespan for certain technologies, e.g. solid state drives. Microsoft Drive Optimizer was first officially shipped with Windows XP.
From Windows 8, the program was renamed to Microsoft Drive Optimizer, with some references changed to say Defragment and Optimize Drives or simply Optimize Drives.
Early history
As early as the end of 1982, the IBM PC DOS operating system that shipped with early IBM Personal Computers included a Disk Volume Organization Optimizer to defragment the 5¼-inch floppy disks that those machines used. At this time, Microsoft's MS-DOS did not defragment hard disks. Several third party software developers marketed defragmenters to fill this gap. MS-DOS 6.0 introduced Microsoft Defrag. Windows NT, however, did not offer a Defrag utility, and Symantec was suggested by others as a possible alternative for the utility.
Initial releases of Windows NT lacked a defragmentation tool. Versions through Windows NT 3.51 did not have an application programming interface for moving data clusters on hard disks. Executive Software, later renamed Diskeeper Corporation, released Diskeeper defragmentation software for Windows NT 3.51, which shipped with a customized version of the NT kernel and file system drivers that could move clusters.
Microsoft included file system control (FSCTL) commands to move clusters in the Windows NT 4.0 kernel, which worked for both NTFS and FAT partitions. However, Windows NT 4.0 did not provide a graphical or command-line user interface.
Debut
Disk Defragmenter also shipped as part of Windows 95, Windows 98 and Windows Me. It could be scheduled using a Maintenance Wizard and supported command line switches. This version had the limitation that if the contents of the drive changed during defragmentation, it rescanned the drive and restarted the process from where it left off.
The Disk Defragmenter in Windows 2000 was a stripped-down licensed version of Diskeeper, licensed from Diskeeper Corporation. It uses the following techniques:
Moving all the index or directory information to one spot. Moving this spot into the center of the data, i.e. one third of the way in, so that average head travel to data is halved compared to having directory information at the front.
Moving infrequently used files further from the directory area.
Obeying a user-provided table of file descriptions to emphasize or ignore.
Making files contiguous so that they can be read without unnecessary seeking.
-- Timestamps --
0:00 Video Intro
0:10 Starting disk defragmentation
12:05 Again for good measure
13:08 Shut down
13:14 Outro
-- Settings and application information --
Used emulator: PCem v17
CPU: Pentium 120
OS: Windows 98 Second Edition
#Nostalgia #1990s #Vintage #Aesthetics
Website: nostalgiarealm.com
