Mike
***Do page files fragment? Yes, they do, but it doesn't matter as long as they are system managed.***If a fixed page file is contiguous at the time it is created it remains contiguous. Page files do not change position on the partition. You do not need to defragment because they are contiguous.
We hold differing views on how to create page files and I suspect neither of us will change our positions. However, I think you should not put a positive gloss in this statement in the way you have. As the fragmented parts drop out of use, they are absorbed back into the drive's free space. It is this occurrence, which leads to free space fragmentation and to greater file fragmentation. The impact of this becomes more pronounced as the disk space on the partition becomes more fully
utilised. This is a problem, not a benefit, coming from using a Windows Managed page file.
A common problem I find when looking at System Information files is that many users fail to appreciate how important it is to maintain an adequate amount of free disk space on the C partition. I currently encourage users to have at least 25% free. This can
have a noticeable impact on defragmenting and system performance.
Where we might agree is that the benefits of defragmentation are far less material today than they were in years gone by. Leaving aside solid state drives, the performance from conventional hard drives is extremely variable so choosing a hard drive which
has better performance benchmark can have a big impact on system performance.