Sort by LastChanged

[jbeauchamp]

I did not see a discussion directly related to using LastChanged instead of ByName.  ByName seems arbitrary, except as in one post, the author pointed out that Explorer reads them in alphabetical order (is that only when I say sort by name? Frequently I have by Date Modified).

For data disks, like mainly backup, it would seem that there would be less resorting if these were ordered by LastChanged.  Then, I also wonder if this should be on all disks.  My thought is that things unchanged can sit and not be resorted over and over whereas new files will sit "on top" and cause less hassle to defragment with no lack of value in the arbitary(?) ByName file sort order.

Then why not do the same for system disks, etc.?

I don't know - there could be logic which means that this creates more chaos and more resorting than the arbitary ByName.  For instance, files could be the same size and change a lot and stay in the same place with ByName but flail around with LastChange. 

It just seems that LastChange would confine resorting to a smaller area while leaving the rest nicely defragmented.

I took, for example, systemdiskmonthly and changed the last couple of zones to LastChange.  Mistake?  Make sense?

[Kasuha]

Sorting by name is not arbitrary - whole file pathname (including folder name) is taken into account which results in files from the same folder being placed together. It's the only really useful sorting method IMO, any other sorting has far better chance of placing related files far from each other.

[jeroen]

What you say is true, if you sort by LastChanged date then the zone will be more static and will need less re-sorting. This can be useful in certain situations. However, the big disadvantage is that files belonging to a single application can have different and totally unrelated dates. For example a configuration file will have a new date. So the files belonging to an application will be spread all over a zone, they will not be placed close together. In other words, sorting by LastChanged date will make MyDefrag finish faster, but will not produce the fastest disk.

[poutnik]

It still can be handy for data storage without critical access demands.
Especially if not sorted, but zoned according to time intervals.

[Robert001]

if you sort by LastChanged date then the zone will be more static and will need less re-sorting