Defragmenting disks under Linux

[M3 Freak]

On Tue, 2004-04-06 at 16:30, Chris Jones wrote:
> As a long-time user of various Windoze "distro's" (from win3.11 all the
> way to Win2k), I have come to recognise that one needs to regularly
> de-frag hard-disks under windoze. 
> 
> My question is:-
> Is linux susceptible to fragmentation?
> 
> If so, then what tool is best to cure it, and keep it cured?

You'll find that Linux filesystems don't fragment anywhere near as much
as the Windows filesystems.  Case in point: my crappy little Dell XPS
M200s is 1.5% fragmented, and it's on 24x7 (since it's my multimedia,
network storage and print server).  My laptop's boot and root partitions
(simple, default partition setup) are 0% and 2% fragmented.  It's been
running RH9 and was recently upgraded to FC1.

If things do get out of hand in some way and your filesystems do start
to fragment more than, say, 10%, you can simply copy everything out of
the affected filesystem, and copy the data back.  That should eliminate
the fragmentation.

However, I think you'll find fragmentation is going to be non-existent.

HTH,

Kanwar
Systems Aligned Inc.
www.systemsaligned.com