Running head: SHORT TITLE OF PAPER (<= 50 CHARACTERS)

Unit 8 Analysis 1 System Performance
Computer Structure and logic
Mr.Zakkary
11/11/14
Brandon Walker

In computing, file system fragmentation, sometimes called file system aging, is the inability of a file system to lay out related data sequentially (contiguously), an inherent phenomenon in storage-backed file systems that allow in-place modification of their contents. It is a special case of data fragmentation. File system fragmentation increases disk head movement or seeks, which are known to hinder throughput. The correction to existing fragmentation is to reorganize files and free space back into contiguous areas, a process called defragmentation. File system fragmentation is projected to become more problematic with newer hardware due to the increasing disparity between sequential access speed and rotational latency (and to a lesser extent seek time), of consumer-grade hard disks,[3] on which file systems are usually placed. Thus, fragmentation is an important problem in recent file system research and design. The containment of fragmentation not only depends on the on-disk format of the file system, but also heavily on its implementation.[4]
In simple file system benchmarks, the fragmentation factor is often omitted, as realistic aging and fragmentation is difficult to model. Rather, for simplicity of comparison, file system benchmarks are often run on empty file systems, and unsurprisingly, the results may vary heavily from real-life access patterns.[5]
File system fragmentation has less impact upon the performance of solid-state drives, as there is no mechanical seek time involved like with rotating media, though additional non-sequential I/O operations impacts system performance, and many file system architectures consume additional internal resources when fragmentation is present.[ciWhether or not the extra memory will make a noticeable difference will depend on how you use your PC and whether or not you have many applications running simultaneously. Adding extra memory will certainly allow your PC to cope much better with having multiple browser tabs open at the same time. At the time of writing we're using a PC running the Google Chrome browser, which is currently using over 3GB of RAM all by itself.
When your PC runs out of available RAM, it starts using the hard drive instead. This is much, much slower than RAM and will cause your PC to slow down. It's likely that heavy use of a web browser will push overall memory requirements beyond your available 4GB, so increasing this to 8GB will prevent such slow-downs.
However, if you're very much a one-tab-at-a-time person, you may notice less of an improvement. You may find that you start to change the way you use your PC after the upgrade as it will be able to cope with much heavier use without starting to struggle. tation needed]