Here is an illustrated walkthrough of a typical PFS-Defrag session... For those interested there are a number of other programs running (none of which are required for PFS-Defrag), including Powerwindows, MCP, Birdie and CenterTitles. QuickGrab was used to take the screenshots and Personal Paint 7.1 was used to chop them up.

DOpus users can start PFS-Defrag from a PFS disk pop-up menu using the supplied DOpus filetype for PFS disks/partitions.

Alternatively, you can start it from Workbench, with any other program launcher or from a CLI prompt. Full instructions for different ways you can start the program to suit you are provided in the archive in the AmigaGuide manual and in the on-line documentation on this web-site.

If you start PFS-Defrag without specifying the name of a drive to defragment (for example, you just double-click its icon) you will get a volume requester, allowing you to choose one.

With a little help from Diskvalid, PFS-Defrag will detect whether the selected volume is formatted with PFS (in case you selected "Ram Disk:")!

PFS-Defrag runs Diskvalid (supplied with PFS itself) to determine which files are fragmented and also to check for errors or other problems on your disk or partition.

If Diskvalid finds any errors or minor problems ("notes") on the disk then PFS-Defrag will display the requester, below. It will allow you to view either a complete log of Diskvalid's output or just a list of the errors and/or problems encountered.

You can still choose to proceed with the defragmentation (even if you view a log), although this is not recommended if Diskvalid found errors! If no errors or other problems were found this requester does not appear.

After Diskvalid has finished and, if any problems were found, the user has decided to proceed with the defragmentation, PFS-Defrag gathers some information about the fragmented files such as their size.

PFS-Defrag then reports the results to you in the requester below.

The most important information is the size of the largest fragmented file - if you want to defragment this file you will need at least this much free space on a different partition or your RAM: disk. Due to the way in which PFS automatically defragments files that are copied on to a disk (PFS-Defrag manages this process), it is also unlikely that files will defragment successfully if they are larger than the free space on the drive you are defragmenting.

PFS-Defrag attempts to defragment files by copying them to an alternative location and then copying them back over the originals. This requester allows you to specify a suitable temporary location with sufficient free space for the largest file you want to defragment.

RAM: is a good place to use, as defragmenting is not very effective for files larger than a few MB and you are bound to have this much memory free! It is not advisable to use the same disk as the one you are defragmenting as the effectiveness will be reduced. This screenshot also shows three of the log files that PFS-Defrag produces in RAM: and also the name of the program used to take these screenshots! A fourth log file is made during defragmentation.

As said above, defragmenting is not very effective for files larger than a few MB. These files will probably require a few attempts. You can specify a maximum size for the files you want to defragment - any files larger than this will be skipped by PFS-Defrag and left untouched.

So now PFS-Defrag can start defragmenting your files... Note that so far it has skipped 9 files that were larger than the maximum size you specified. It has attempted to defragment 13 files and is now working on the 23rd. The bar in the progress indicator gives an indication of progress in terms of time as it relates to the size of the files being processed. It updates twice for each file (once after copying to the temporary location and again after it is copied back over the original).

There are some problems with defragmenting YAM e-mail message or folder index files in that the next time YAM starts up it will need to rebuild the index of that folder. If the folder has a lot of messages (i.e. hundreds) that could take a minute or so. PFS-Defrag detects YAM message files in large folders and gives you the option of whether to defragment them or not.

You can also choose to automatically defragment or skip all subsequent YAM files to prevent this requester re-appearing and a maximum limit for folder sizes to defragment automatically (currently 100 in the requester). If you do not use YAM you do not need to worry about this - and hopefully you will never even see this requester! If you do use YAM then you will probably find that PFS-Defrag speeds up loading folders considerably! :)

PFS-Defrag is still defragmenting but it has now skipped a few YAM files. DOpus users get a progress indicator as shown throughout PFS-Defrag's operation and can also abort the defragmentation stage. Otherwise you can abort PFS-Defrag by "cancelling" any of the requesters that appear before defragmenting starts.

PFS-Defrag has finished attempting to defragment your disk. It reminds you how many fragmented files there were in the first place, how many it attempted to defragment, and how many it skipped because they were either too big or were a YAM file.

You can choose to run PFS-Defrag again on the same or a different partition - in the latter case you will be presented with the volume requester above. Alternatively, you can view a log of PFS-Defrag's actions and "thought processes" during defragmentation and then choose whether to run PFS-Defrag again or you can just quit. You will generally have to run PFS-Defrag twice to defragment most files on a typical partition that has not been defragmented recently. However, the number of times will increase if you are defragmenting large files or do not have a lot of free space on the drive.