Something else you won't have to worry about.

I get email updates from PC Magazine with various offers. Every once in awhile, they mention something about Linux. But but mostly, they discuss Windows related software and hardware issues.

I recently received an email stating that PC magazine had a brand new utility to help defrag your Windows hard drive.

According to Wikipedia, "Fragmentation occurs when the operating system cannot or will not allocate enough contiguous space to store a complete file as a unit, but instead puts parts of it in gaps between other files..."

In it's simplest terms, Windows, rewrites files in such a way that when space runs out, the file fragments. So a piece of the file is placed someplace else on the hard drive.

Fragmenting can make a mess of your hard drive. So much so, that your system performance slows down. In order to try and boost your system's performance, you have to do a defrag routine to the hard drive. Defragmenting a hard drive is an attempt to reassemble the bits of files that have been scattered all over the place. Windows attempts to piece things together again. This way, your system doesn't have to spend time searching the hard drive for all the pieces of file when it's opening up.

Linux never needs to be defragged! An explanation of why this is so can be found here.

So with Linux, there's no need to buy the latest and greatest utility to defragment your hard drive. Linux hard drives don't need to be defragged.

Get Linux and hang on to your loose change for other things.