Joshua Murphy wrote: > On Fri, Nov 28, 2008 at 6:46 AM, Alan McKinnon <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > >> On Friday 28 November 2008 13:14:42 Dale wrote: >> >>> If this is a little high, what would be the best way to defrag it? >>> >> By not defragging it. >> >> It's not Windows. Windows boxes needs defragging not because fragmentation is >> a huge problem in itself, but because windows filesystems are a steaming mess >> of [EMAIL PROTECTED] that do little right and most things wrong. Defrag >> treats the >> symptom, not the cause :-) >> >> Reiser tends to self-balance itself out. What is especially noteworthy is >> that >> none of the general purpose Linux filesystems provide a defrag utility. >> Theodore 'Tso and Hans Reiser are both exceptional programmers, if there was >> a need for such a tool they would assuredly have written one. They did not, >> so there probably isn't. >> >> Any Linux defrag tool you encounter will have been written by a third party >> separate from the developers. It will move blocks around and update >> superblocks, the drive will have to be unmounted for that to work and a >> slight misunderstanding of how to do it will ruin data. >> >> Are you willing to take the very real risk of data corruption? >> >> >>> Is >>> there a best way? I do have a second hard drive that I back up too. >>> Both Drives are 80Gbs and I do have a set of DVD back ups as well. I >>> can update those pretty quick. >>> >> >> -- >> alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com >> >> >> > > While not trying to incite flames here... xfs isn't general purpose? > xfs_fsr defrags xfs partitions while they're mounted and is designed > to be used from cron (it's in xfsdump, not xfsprogs). File > fragmentation, while a fact of life on any filesystem that sees any > real use, does slow access times, as the drive head has to jump from > one place to another, so a lot of fragmentation is a bad thing... but > as you say, we're not dealing with FAT based FS's here, so severe > fragmentation only shows itself on very full filesystems. I very > rarely see over 80% usage of my filesystems and have never > consistently checked fragmentation levels, though, so I can't say > whether xfs's being the exception on having a tool for the job means > it particularly needed one... > >
Given my experience with XFS, I won't be switching anytime soon. I used that once on a in-laws system. After each crash, power failure, I had to reinstall. Let's just say it left a bad taste in my mouth. ;-) I'm not saying it is a bad file system for someone but certainly not for me. You are right tho, every file system has some fragmentation. It just can't be otherwise. I guess I could always make my back ups, then redo my partitions, and copy them back. I have done that once before. Worked very well then but not real sure about how udev would like that. I would think it would work OK but call me chicken. Dale :-) :-)
