Following up on Paul's recent posting on free space consolidation, I felt the following blog has some relevance. Please note that Paul's post has received quite a bit of feedback and I will respond to that in the next few days, time permitting, because it is a very involved subject. Just over three years ago Gartner, a leading IT Analyst group published a report on defragmentation, and specifically the impact of defragmentation methodologies on free space fragmentation. Gartner enjoys a well-earned reputation for quality and accuracy of its reports, and this typically is the case. However, they do on rare occasion make mistakes. I will play devil's advocate and argue a particular little misstep in this report. Keep in mind that the information about the built-in defragmenter is correct; however, the broader conclusion derived from data applies flawed logic.