Defragmenting disks under Linux

Chris Jones linux at stow-jones.co.uk
Thu Apr 8 17:49:34 UTC 2004


On Tue, 2004-04-06 at 22:30, M3 Freak wrote:
> 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.

To Kanwar and everyone else who responded to my question, thank you very much for your comments.
 It has put my mind at considerable ease. It has also added another nail into BillG's intended coffin.

Thanks

-- 
>From Chris Jones
mailto:chris at stow-jones.co.uk
web: http://www.stow-jones.co.uk/





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