Defrag98: Windows 98 Disk Defragmenter Simulator Online

https://defrag98.com

57•throw0101a•1h ago

Comments

pir8life4me•1h ago

Brilliant. Whirring disk noise is nice touch.

If AI generated this is what the AI revolution is all about.

Can we get a cross platform screensaver?

pyaamb•1h ago

Need this but for AI models. Sleep mode where they self prune and optimize overnight for their daily purpose.

CharlesW•41m ago

https://platform.claude.com/docs/en/managed-agents/dreams

vessenes•1h ago

I love this. I wanted the disk noise, and I got it. I will say that’s a lot faster than my drives were in the late 1990s though.

roger_•1h ago

My computer's definitely gonna be faster after this.

NBJack•27m ago

I do laugh in that in all the times I ever did this for real (even back to my massive 170MB drive), it never felt much faster.

wild_pointer•1h ago

Legend

toast0•58m ago

Love the warning for using on a mobile device.

MarvinYork•53m ago

The sound killed me... :D

singiamtel•47m ago

There's something satisfying about defragging that has been lost to time. Like oiling a squeaky engine

olivierestsage•45m ago

Hot

Hobadee•40m ago

I love it. A couple notes: - This is about 10x a real defrag speed - WAAAY too fast - IIRC the "Data that will not be moved" was typically lumped at the beginning of the drive, not spread out all over.

msephton•30m ago

It could be spread out too

vunderba•25m ago

I'm a stickler for accuracy too. The defragged blocks in the original Win9x program weren't solid blue - they had a hatch pattern texture to them. I remember it way too vividly.

Source: Watching a disk defrag was every millenial kids equivalent of going to the laundromat and watching laundry tumble.

https://youtu.be/dc_SDyLYq3U?t=347

someothherguyy•12m ago

author commenting on such things:

https://morello.dev/blog/defrag98-rebuild

what it looked like before

https://morello.dev/blog/windows-98-defrag-simulator

a previous discussion:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40962195

here is another version i found when googling these things that seems somewhat similar, with llm-looking section comments

https://horatioconkerhead.github.io/win98-defrag/

pjot•35m ago

Will need to degauss after this

stavros•22m ago

What, you don't need the data any more? Or are you conflating screen degaussing?

brcmthrowaway•27m ago

What were the major filesystem technology improvements that made this redundant?

predictsoft•24m ago

I think NTFS and SSD disks.

megagpt1•18m ago

FAT32 allocates the first free block. IIRC, file order must match disk order because reasons. Ext2 prioritized allocating the middle of free space to allow fragment-free growth on both sides and it became a standard filesystem feature after that.

stavros•22m ago

I need to set up a Windows 95 computer with a hard drive and stream the defragging online, complete with live audio.

josefrichter•18m ago

bill gates, I want my time back!

vunderba•18m ago

When I was younger, my friends and I joked about making a "Disk Fragmenter" which would enumerate through every file on the disk and split them into non-contiguous clusters to make sure that the actuator arm on your platter-drive gets a PROPER WORKOUT TO FEEL THE BURN.

leoooodias•8m ago

LOL

RetroTechie•11m ago

4 Drives, 5.5G total. Luxury!

Per-drive individual sounds, and BSoD included. Nice touches, love it!

3eb7988a1663•4m ago

There is even a click noise when you idly tap the screen.

As great as it is, way too fast.

Marked Share – Markdown Publishing

Jeffy Loop What if coding agents had to prove they were done?

Show HN: From a 9MB app to processing video and batching up to 100 photo

China's Super-Dam Is Becoming an Upstream Water Bomb

Unsloth Desktop

Laurie Anderson's manuscript to be locked away for 88 years in Future Library

Phaseonebig: Message Board for Agents

Focal.vc

Git3 – Use an S3 bucket as a Git remote

Minimax H3 Max Live – An infinite broadcast is generated by the chat

The Rise and Fall of Agent Civilizations

Ask HN: How do you handle the yearly 5% price increases of SaaS subscriptions?

Speech to text in a crowded room with the OpenAI Realtime API

38% of Hugging Face Spaces are permanently broken; linked GitHub repos are fine

New Chinese surveillance leaves foreigners nowhere to hide

How cats.txt showed llms.txt evidence is GEO astrology

FBI Disrupts Chinese Proxy Tools Used in Mass Hacking of US Agencies and Infrast

Open Battery Information

Highest-ever ocean temperature measured as powerful El Niño forms

OpenContext – Persistent, project-local memory for AI coding agents via MCP

Police departments weren’t looking for Flock abuse. We did it for them.

Full-Bandwidth Transformer

When AI Writes the Code Verification Is the New Implementation

The Foothills Of Bay Area House Party

Lawmakers added $1 to car insurance policies. That money paid for Flock cameras

Lion-man – the oldest confirmed statue ever discovered

Sean Minhui Tashi Chua on Polar Data and Creative Expression

I co-founded Burning Man. The festival has lost its soul

Meghalayan – The Latest Geologic Age

How Big Tech Blinded Itself to the Grassroots AI Revolt