FYI Note: The origin of this information may be internal or external to Novell. Novell makes every effort within its means to verify this information. However, the information provided in this document is FOR YOUR INFORMATION only. Novell makes no explicit or implied claims to the validity of this information. TITLE: Optimizing a Server Hard drive DOCUMENT ID#: FYI.P.6014 DATE: January 29, 1993 PRODUCT: NetWare Lite PRODUCT VERSION: All versions SUPERSEDES: NA SYMPTOM: NA ISSUE/PROBLEM Optimizing a Server Hard drive During the day to day work on your computer, files are deleted, rewritten, or replaced on the hard disk. This will eventually cause your files to be "fragmented". Fragmented refers to a file being divided into pieces and those pieces being located throughout your hard disk instead of in one contiguous block of disk space. Thus if you try and access one of these files the hard disk has to look for a single file in several places. This in turn causes your hard disk to respond slowly. The more fragmented your disk is, the slower it will respond. If the hard disk is in a NetWare Lite server the entire network can be affected. To eliminate this effect consider "optimizing" you hard disk. A disk is optimized by rearranging the data so that files are not spread out over the disk. There are many different utilities available for optimizing hard disks. Note:  It is vital that no other stations access your hard disk while the utility is running.  Disk Optimizers can take a considerable amount of time to complete data arrangement. (20 minutes or more)  It is recommended that you have a backup of your vital information before optimizing.  If your hard disk is in a NetWare Lite server, the optimizing utility must be executed from the server itself and not from a client.