Files on a file system can be fragmented meaning they're split into several parts that are scattered all over hard disk. This usually means that reading these files is much slower because disk heads need to seek individual parts before reading them.
There are tools to defragment files, but I wonder what they do.
- do they make files continuous or
- do they make files contiguous?
English is not my native language. That's why I'm having problems distinguishing between the two. To me the first one seems more appropriate, but who am I to judge…
Best Answer
Continuous implies there is no discrete distinction between members, contiguous impies that the various members of the set are next to each other.
As an example, the visible spectrum of light is a continuous set, but when most people draw a rainbow, they put several colors right next to each other in a contiguous set.
Files are stored as discrete blocks on a drive, with the physical sectors lying one up against the other, but with discrete boundaries between each packet. Since each packet has a header, there is a discrete boundary, and as such, the correct word is contiguous.