Defrag98: Windows 98 Disk Defragmenter Simulator Online

When I was younger, my friends and I joked about making a "Disk Fragmenter" which would enumerate through every file on the disk and split them into non-contiguous clusters to make sure that the actuator arm on your platter-drive gets a PROPER WORKOUT TO FEEL THE BURN.

Perhaps it's appropriate for me to link to the free game I made where you play a taxi driving through Disk Defragmenter and delivering stray blocks of data to their final locations: https://safetystoatstudios.itch.io/ddr. It was pretty fun to watch Defragmenter as a kid, but it would have been better if it was interactive, kind of like the 3D maze screensaver.

There's something satisfying about defragging that has been lost to time. Like oiling a squeaky engine

I love this. I wanted the disk noise, and I got it. I will say that’s a lot faster than my drives were in the late 1990s though.

I recall there being some techno-mysticism surrounding defragging regarding how often and when it was necessary, what it did and didn’t help, etc. I also remember the claim “Macs don’t need defragging” but I don’t know if HFS(+) was actually any less prone to fragmentation than FAT32 was. Companies like Symantec were happy to sell defragging tools to Mac users regardless.

I love it. A couple notes: - This is about 10x a real defrag speed - WAAAY too fast - IIRC the "Data that will not be moved" was typically lumped at the beginning of the drive, not spread out all over.

Will need to degauss after this

My computer's definitely gonna be faster after this.

I love this. However, Amiga’s Reorg program had a vastly better display, with a larger, resizable window and individual pixels instead of large boxes. You could see much more of the disk at once and get a feel for what the entire operation was doing. Large holes would appear in the middle of a hunk of data, then large files would get moved into the hole, leaving new holes where their incontiguous blocks use to be. Defrag was nice. Reorg was captivating. I miss it.

Love the warning for using on a mobile device.

This seems....wrong? In the start it is writing over data in the start of the disk that has not been read/relocated (some non-free sectors NEVER light up as "Read", only as "writen") which would cause their data to be lost.

I started the defrag on F and got about 1/4 the way, but had to stop cause my brother wanted to use the family computer.

When I changed it between drives and back I lost my progress :/

Maybe my memory is bad, but I recall defrag taking hours to complete.

I used to watch defrag (and defraggler). If you have OCD they are very satisfying to watch. The more fragmented they were to start with, the better.

In the same vein, but showing live the go allocator and GC operating on the heap of a running program: https://github.com/MichaelMure/gogc98

I wish ext4, BtrFS, and XFS had something like this.

It feels a little too defragmented to start.

Typically it would be getting some bits from other parts of the drive and there would be a few (that many) bits it wouldn't move because they were the swap file and DOS boot system files.

Need this but for AI models. Sleep mode where they self prune and optimize overnight for their daily purpose.

There is even a click noise when you idly tap the screen.

As great as it is, way too fast.

4 Drives, 5.5G total. Luxury!

Per-drive individual sounds, and BSoD included. Nice touches, love it!

The sound killed me... :D

Defragmenting XFS is much less dramatic.

I need to set up a Windows 95 computer with a hard drive and stream the defragging online, complete with live audio.

What were the major filesystem technology improvements that made this redundant?

Legend

Brilliant. Whirring disk noise is nice touch.

If AI generated this is what the AI revolution is all about.

Can we get a cross platform screensaver?

bill gates, I want my time back!

This scratched an itch for me.

I’m going to watch Johnny Castaway now.

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