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sparse images fragment
Authored by: djarsky on Jan 13, '04 10:03:10PM

One reason not to use sparse images is that they heavily fragment on your drive as they need to 'grow'. This isn't the case with Panther's file-vaulted home directories because when a user logs out the OS can automatically defragment and claim unused space in the file-vaulted image. I doubt this would happen if you follow this tip.

For a disk image that's constantly being written to, it's much better to create a large read/write image, than a growable sparse image. Sparse images are great for one time 'write', like backing up a whole bunch of files and burning the image.



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sparse images fragment
Authored by: Bookman on Jun 05, '04 03:55:58AM

Is this true? Why wouldn't Mac OS X clean up the fragmented image once it was dismounted, like it will any other file?

I thought our days of worrying about file fragmentation and disk optimization were past.

--Books



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sparse images fragment
Authored by: beeble on Jun 16, '04 10:36:56PM

defrag only works in Panther on files < 20MB in size. The idea is that a file of 20MB or less is probably going to fit into an available continuous block of space so the whole thing gets rewritten. Computers and drives are fast enough now that most people won't see the overhead from the extra work.

The problem with sparse images is that they are greater than 20MB so they don't get defragmented. As they expand, they create lots of little segments over the hard drive and end up very fragmented. They are designed for the purpose of dumping files in of an unknown total size, copying the image to some other drive or device and then deleting the image.

For almost any other circumstance, a regular image will serve you better.

---
um!



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