Texas Instruments TI-84 - Manual (Page 545)

Chapter 18: Memory and Variable Management 542
Note: The process message Defragmenting... is displayed whenever an application
marked for deletion is encountered. Garbage collection may take up to 20 minutes,
depending on how much of archive memory has been used to store variables.
After garbage collection, depending on how much additional space is freed, the variable
may or may not be archived. If not, you can unarchive some variables and try again.
Why Is Garbage Collection Necessary? Why Is Garbage Collection Necessary? Why Is Garbage Collection Necessary? Why Is Garbage Collection Necessary?
The user data archive is divided into sectors. When you first begin archiving, variables
are stored consecutively in sector 1. This continues to the end of the sector.
An archived variable is stored in a continuous block within a single sector. Unlike an
application stored in user data archive, an archived variable cannot cross a sector
boundary. If there is not enough space left in the sector, the next variable is stored at the
beginning of the next sector. Typically, this leaves an empty block at the end of the
previous sector.
variable B
variable C
variable A
variable D
Depending on its size,
variable D is stored in
one of these locations.
Sector 1
Sector 3
Sector 2
Empty
block