External Fragmentation and the SMC

[mth411]

I notice that whenever I delete small roms, like pcengine or txt files or the like, I slowly lost space. When I got up to about 100MB, my 128MB card was full. The problem is fragmentation.

When a file is deleted, if the space is too small another file doesn't fill that space. On the PC we can run defragment and recover the space.

The only thing I have thought of so far is to copy up my SMC to the PC, reformat the card, and then transfer it all back to the SMC, this wastes one long write, but helps me reclaim 28MB.

This problem is common with hard storage and variable sized files. Digital cameras dont have such problems as most of the pictures are of the same size, so one 1 is deleted another can be saved in its place.

I just wish there was a quick defrag program I could run that would do everything on the Gamepark and save me from the slow usb transfer both ways. And using a smartmedia reader is a solution, but I haven't found any tools that are free and offer a defragmentation.

Please comment!

mth411

 

[deanollive]

mmm I thought I was losing space.
But sometimes (Ive only got 64mbs though) when I notice "lost" space I just whack the refresh key and its cool. If not then I just quit the linker and restart and the lost space is found?

Very strange this (

 

[Robster]

I don't think fragmentation is the cause. Fragmentation slows down performance on hard disks because the heads have to move around the disk, but it isn't an issue for SMCs because there are no moving parts.

Lost clusters sounds more likely to be the problem. Did you check the card for errors, either in a card reader or in Pacrom? (I haven't tried pacrom's smc fixing, so I don't know how well it works)

 

[reeced]

I agree - I don't think fragmentation is the problem. If you have a card reader try scandisk on it - this will usually find the problem and fix it.