Keeping Your SQL Server Databases Defragmented with Diskeeper

To defrag external fragmentation takes an operating system utility, not a SQL Server utility. One of the most popular tools for defragmenting SQL Server database files is a tool from Condusiv Technologies Corporation called Diskeeper. Diskeeper has been around for many years, and many of you may already be familiar with it, at least as how it is used for Windows file and print servers. What many DBAs aren't familiar with is that it is the best tool for defragmenting external fragmentation on their SQL Servers.

There are two types of external fragmentation with which a utility like Diskeeper deals with: file fragmentation and free space fragmentation. File fragmentation concerns computer disk files that are not whole, but rather are broken into scattered parts; while free space fragmentation means that the empty space on a disk is broken into scattered parts rather than being collected all in one big empty space. File fragmentation causes problems with accessing data stored in computer disk files, while free space fragmentation may cause problems creating new data files or extending (adding to) old ones.