On Wed, 5 Jan 2000, Alan Mead wrote:
> >How do I defragment these partitions?
> I didn't see any replies so I'll throw this in and someone can correct me
> if I'm wrong: I've never seen a defrag for Linux and my understanding was
> that ext2 didn't need it. I would hazard a guess that this means it
> automatically keep fragmentation low.
<disclaimer>It is my understanding that: </disclaimer>
Most unix file systems, including ext2, scatter files across a drive
(intentionally) as a form of avoiding intra-file fragmentation. This
tends to keep down file fragmentation, and seek time doesn't tend to vary
a lot since the drive heads always tends to move around a lot. Advantage
is performance doesn't degrade horribly the way a fragged FAT partition
does.
(Incidentally, this makes evident one of the few uses for disk spanning.)
All this said, I haven't ever seen a defragged unix drive, and thus don't
know what if any performance difference it would make.
Rob
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