>>> [...] 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 :-) > > I don't buy into that argument and never did. Every few months I copy the > whole HD to another one and then back to counter fragmentation (ext3) and > the system becomes noticeably faster after doing it (speed increase in > emerge --sync for example.) Maybe it's not fragmentation but rather related > files being more closely together after I do this.
How exactly do you copy the files? Be careful not to lose some file property. How about sparse files, for example? AFAIK, you can make a complete backup of a filesytem with (as root, running from another system - such as a liveCD) $ cd /path/to/mountpoint $ tar -cSv -f /path/to/tarball.tar . But I am not sure.
