The Defrag Game

The Defrag Game #

The data stored on computer disks is divided up into “blocks”, and often a file (such as a word processor document or video) is too big for one block, and so is split up into several blocks. However, the blocks aren’t necessarily beside each other on the computer’s disk, and if you are opening a file, it will take longer if the computer has to read the file from blocks spread around the disk. To avoid this problem getting out of hand, computers need to “defragment” the files, that it, try to move all the blocks so that they are together. This game gives students some experience with the process needed to try to achieve this.

This activity has been developed by Shadi Ibrahim, SuYu, and Tim Bell.

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Activity description (PDF) #