Does Steam "allocating disk space" eliminate fragmentation?

[Maxarini]

As far as I know, disk fragmentation is when a file or program is written onto a hard drive with gaps in between the data. This means that it will take longer to read the data because the hard drives "head" has to move farther.

Say I try to download 2 steam games at once. Steam will "allocate the disk space" for both games. As far as I know this will create a kind of partition on the drive for that game and only use it for that particular game.

So, if steam made 2 of these "partitions" for my 2 games, what would happen if I let game 1 download halfway, paused it and downloaded game 2, and then finish downloading game 1?

Would it cause fragmentation or do these separate "partitions" on the drive prevent that?

Thanks!

 

[aznricepuff]

My advice is to not even bother worrying about stuff like this. I doubt steam tries to minimize or prevent fragmentation by itself (beyond what the OS/file system will do normally). I'm pretty sure "allocating disk space" just means steam is calculating how much space is needed for the local files and reserving it (I could be wrong though).

In any case, every modern version of windows performs disk defragmentation automatically on a regular schedule. If your disk becomes fragmented, it won't be for long. And if you are still not satisfied, you can always manually check fragmentation status by going into the control panel -> system -> admin tools -> optimize drives.

 

[James Mason]

Windows 8 and up automatically defrag your hard drives over time, and eventually keep them at 0% all the time.