Performance can suffer if your database file is excessively fragmented. This is disk fragmentation and it becomes more important as your database increases in size.

The database server determines the number of file fragments in each dbspace when you start a database on Windows. The database server displays the following information in the database server messages window when the number of fragments is greater than one: Database file "mydatabase.db" consists of nnn fragments.

You can also obtain the number of database file fragments using the DBFileFragments database property. See Database-level properties.

To eliminate file fragmentation problems, put the database on a disk partition by itself and then periodically run one of the available Windows disk defragmentation utilities.