Warp wrote:
>   I'm not exactly sure XP survives such a transfer while still being fully
> bootable from the new drive. Does it?

You can do it if you put the files in the same place, maintaining the 
fragmentation. :-?

>   (I know from experience that a linux system can be fully transferred from
> one disk to another with a simple "cp -ax",

That's nice about Linux. All you need to do is fix up the grub stuff, 
rewriting the boot sectors or whatever grub does when you reinit it.

>   Anyways, it's just one fragmented file. It's not such a big deal. I'm just
> wondering *why* the small files are not being compacted to the beginning of
> the partition in order to create a larger contiguous empty space.

Because the calculation is "how much time will I spend moving it compared to 
the time I spend defragging it."  NTFS keeps track of how often you use each 
file, too, so the system can look and say "he only accesses this once a 
month; there's no benefit to moving it closer to its directory."

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   There's no CD like OCD, there's no CD I knoooow!

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