This article is rated C-class on Wikipedia's content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects:

Guild of Copy Editors This article was copy edited by Basalisk, a member of the Guild of Copy Editors, on 5 June 2012.Guild of Copy EditorsWikipedia:WikiProject Guild of Copy EditorsTemplate:WikiProject Guild of Copy EditorsGuild of Copy Editors articles Computing: Software / CompSci / Java Mid‑importance This article is within the scope of WikiProject Computing, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of computers, computing, and information technology on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.ComputingWikipedia:WikiProject ComputingTemplate:WikiProject ComputingComputing articles Mid This article has been rated as Mid-importance on the project's importance scale. This article is supported by WikiProject Software (assessed as Mid-importance). This article is supported by WikiProject Computer science (assessed as Mid-importance). This article is supported by WikiProject Java (assessed as Mid-importance). Things you can help WikiProject Computer science with: edit history watch purge Here are some tasks awaiting attention: Article requests : Requested articles/Applied arts and sciences/Computer science, computing, and Internet Cleanup : Computer science articles needing attention Computer science articles needing expert attention Copyedit : Computing Expand : Computer science Infobox : Computer science articles without infoboxes Maintain : Timeline of computing 2020–present Photo : Find pictures for the biographies of computer scientists (see List of computer scientists) Computing articles needing images Stubs : Computer science stubs Unreferenced : WikiProject Computer science/Unreferenced BLPs Project-related : Tag all relevant articles in Category:Computer science and sub-categories with ((WikiProject Computer science)) Computer science Mid‑importance This article is within the scope of WikiProject Computer science, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Computer science related articles on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.Computer scienceWikipedia:WikiProject Computer scienceTemplate:WikiProject Computer scienceComputer science articles Mid This article has been rated as Mid-importance on the project's importance scale. Things you can help WikiProject Computer science with: Here are some tasks awaiting attention: Article requests : Requested articles/Applied arts and sciences/Computer science, computing, and Internet Cleanup : Computer science articles needing attention Computer science articles needing expert attention Copyedit : Computing Expand : Computer science Infobox : Computer science articles without infoboxes Maintain : Timeline of computing 2020–present Photo : Find pictures for the biographies of computer scientists (see List of computer scientists) Computing articles needing images Stubs : Computer science stubs Unreferenced : WikiProject Computer science/Unreferenced BLPs Project-related : Tag all relevant articles in Category:Computer science and sub-categories with ((WikiProject Computer science))

Tip: Anchors are case-sensitive in most browsers. This article links to one or more target anchors that no longer exist. [[heuristic#Computer science|heuristic]] The anchor (#Computer science) has been deleted by other users before. Please help fix the broken anchors. You can remove this template after fixing the problems. | Reporting errors

I have just gone through the article and i was really wondering how would if i insert a setion about compaction (it removes external fragmentation by moving all allocated blocks to one end and free blocks to other) below the external fragmentation?
I mean when you disscuss the issue of external fragmentation you should write about how it can be removed. Prashantgonarkar (talk) 03:39, 14 October 2011 (UTC)Reply[reply]

I have just read through this article and was wondering whether file fragmentation is actually a "phenonemon" or is there a reasonable explanation for why it occurs?

83.104.81.241 (talk) 16:28, 7 May 2009 (UTC)Reply[reply]

The 'Data fragmentation' section tries to explain it. See the File system fragmentation article if that was unclear. -- intgr [talk] 17:32, 7 May 2009 (UTC)Reply[reply]

I recently reverted an edit that turned the Internal Fragmentation section into the text below. This text might have some useful contributions, but it's nowhere near good enough to replace the existing text yet.

Allocation either including reduntant information or data which are not going to be used. The term "internal" means that the unusable storage is inside the allocated region but is not being used.

Purpose and advantages:

• Usually provides increased efficiency or simplicity.

Disadvantages:

• More difficult to reclaim than other forms of fragmentation.
  • Usually the best way to remove it is with a design change. For example, in dynamic memory allocation, memory pools drastically cut internal fragmentation by spreading the space overhead over a larger number of objects.

Examples:

• In many file systems, files always start at the beginning of a sector (simplifies organization, easier growth of files). Any space left over between the last byte of the file and the first byte of the next sector is a form of internal fragmentation called file slack or slack space.
• Examples of use of metadata:
  • Program allocates a single byte of data is often allocated many additional bytes for metadata and alignment.
• Examples of use of reserved (often unused) resources:
  • IP addresses can only be reserved in blocks of certain sizes (thus many IPs are reserved but not actively used). This is contributing to the IPv4 address shortage.
  • English text is often stored with one character in each 8-bit byte. Although in standard ASCII encoding the most significant bit of each byte is always zero.

“It (external fragmentation) is a weakness of certain storage allocation algorithms, when they fail to order memory used by programs efficiently” – surely it is a weakness of all general purpose algorithms, and any that fails to adequately anticipate sequence of (de)allocation operations? If so, this should be changed – or am I missing something? PJTraill (talk) 10:35, 4 November 2017 (UTC)Reply[reply]

One approach to avoid external fragmentation is to move surviving objects such that they are stored contiguously in memory. This is possible only for programming languages where each pointer is well-defined and where all pointers can found. Then this could be done using a garbage collector that is free to move objects. Alternatively, you can work with allocations of fixed memory units where objects are not necessarily stored contiguously in memory (see [1]). This, however, requires compiler support. --AFBorchert (talk) 11:33, 17 December 2020 (UTC)Reply[reply]

File slack and slack space both redirect to Fragmentation (computing)#Internal fragmentation, but these terms do not appear anywhere in the target article. – Tea2min (talk) 08:21, 9 July 2018 (UTC)Reply[reply]

I didn't want to attempt major surgery to this article, but there already is an article File system fragmentation that talks about problems with external storage. I would suggest that this article concentrate on main storage fragmentation and eliminate (or merge) the material on file system frag. Peter Flass (talk) 15:45, 15 July 2021 (UTC)Reply[reply]

This article was the subject of an educational assignment at College Of Engineering Pune supported by Wikipedia Ambassadors through the India Education Program during the 2011 Q3 term. Further details are available on the course page.

The above message was substituted from ((IEP assignment)) by PrimeBOT (talk) on 20:04, 1 February 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]