Defragmenting

I've been troubleshooting problems with my computer's hard drive lately. Often the first step in debugging is to "defrag" the drive.

The concept of a fragmented hard drive comes about simply because files are added and deleted from a hard drive all the time. Say the first three files added to a new hard drive were each 100 characters in size. For our example they'd be stored in sequence so the first file would reside on the disk in memory locations 0 to 99. The second file would be stored from 100 to 199 and the third file from 200 to 299.



Then one day you decide to delete the second file, which frees up the space 100-199. Later you add a new file on the hard drive - but it's 150 characters long. The computer wants to use space in order, so it breaks the fourth file into two parts and stores them separately. The first 100 characters are stored in location: 100-199 and the remaining 50 characters are stored after file three, memory locations 300 to 349. The computer keepsd track of all the parts so later it will know how to reassemble them when you want the file. This file is now considered "fragmented".



In the real world this process is going on continuously. Even when you're not adding or deleting files with applications like word or excel, the computer is creating and using files just to administer the system. Files are perpetually getting fragmented into two, three, or more pieces. Over months the computer becomes slower and slower as it takes more and more time to reassemble files, or to break them into pieces for storage.

Defragmenting puts the files back into simple sequences. In this case it might start by taking the two parts of file four and moving them to a temporary location. Then it could move file three so it butted right up against file one (in memory location 100-199). Finally, file four could be reassembled into one continuous file and it could be stored butted up against file three, into memory locations 200-349. Now the computer performance improves because storing and retrieving are once again efficient!



Being a caregiver for a long period of time really messes with your head. No longer are days and weeks logically organized around your lifelong habits (wake up, take a shower, get in the car, go to work, come home, have dinner, go to bed). Even in the case where a loss is sudden and unexpected, there's a period of time in which the grieving person doesn't live in the world of normal habits or normal thoughts anymore. There's a time in which memories are disorganized and thoughts are confused - some items are just misfiled. Some experiences probably don't get stored at all and they're forgotten completely.

If grieving and mourning don't take place then the disorganization remains - to be dealt with at a later date. When grieving and mourning do progress naturally the minds seems to start the laborious process of defragmenting. It's as if the mind sorts through the volumes of memories, evaluates their relationships, and begins to store them in relation to one another. The thoughts and feelings associated with each memory likely play a part in figuring out how to reassemble sequences. I'm not sure if any widow(er)s would tell you that everything get organized once again. From all the folks I've met so far, I wouldn't be surprised if some parts of you never feel like they're fully reconstructed.