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I want to determine which sectors a file occupies on an HDD. I want to know if a file is split into different non-sequential sectors.
Is there any way to do this on Windows 10?

The ideal solution would be to have a map of all the sectors of a hard drive and then, after selecting a file, it will mark or color all the sectors this file occupies.

I say Reinstate Monica
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churchill
  • 371

2 Answers2

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Tools can use the Defrag API, specifically FSCTL_GET_RETRIEVAL_POINTERS, to get a list of extents (sector ranges) for a given file. You can use it on the command line through fsutil which comes built into Windows:

fsutil file queryextents C:\MyFile.ext

Various other third-party defragmentation apps also frequently have a function to analyze just a single file. For example, SysInternals Contig:

contig -a C:\MyFile.ext

As another example, Piriform Defraggler automatically lists the most fragmented files; selecting one file will show its locations in a graphical view and vice versa.

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The Linux equivalent is the FIEMAP ioctl which returns a list of file "extents" (and the older FIBMAP which returns a list of blocks). It can be used through tools such as filefrag or xfs_io.

grawity
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Perfect Disk (Raxco) does this on hard drives. It does an automatic defrag of the disk and shows a summary of fragmentation.

If you adopt an SSD at some point, the issue becomes irrelevant