hello,

I have the following situation:
- Windows 2003 Server and NTFS
- Firebird 1.5.2 SuperServer Installation
- database size: > 3 GB
- page size: 4096 (default)
- buffers: 32786

I got in trouble with the speed. Checking the OAT/OIT values give
normal results. Then I did a backup/restore and got an acceptable
speed again. Interesting thing was, that the effective database file
size did not change so much. So what was the problem?
I checked the hard disk fragmentaion and found out that my old
database file (before backup/restore cycle) which I renamed, was
fragmented terrible, but the new one was quite not fragmented (as
expected).

Now what I ask for is any good idea to avoid this fragmentation. I
thougth about two possibilities:
1. Running the database file on its own harddisk/partition: problem
on existing systems.
2. Preallocation of diskspace at database creation time to avoid
slowly fragmented growing of the database file. But I foud no
function/parameter to do this.


Thanks for help!

Marco