Disk Maintenance on Linux
 

On Windows XP I have Norton Systemworks 2003 Pro installed to clean my registry, defrag my hard drive and scandisk my hard drive.

On SuSE Linux 9.0 what do I have to equivalent to these tools? Do I even need to defrag files on Linux or "scandisk" the hard drive on Linux? What does Linux have for disk maintenance? And if there is something please tell me it's GUI, I hate using shells to do stuff. I have to admit I'm a slave to my mouse.

I'm not sure
Linux file system type have no fragment.
So defragment is usefulless.

yeah i heard that the disk defragmentor in windows was just a work-around for a crappy file system.

i installed widowsXP a few days ago... and now some system files have managed to be broken into 500 fragments despite the fact that the disk is only 1 gig in use (6 gig disk)

linux does not have a registry... enough said.

Linux filesystem really do not have a fragmentation problem. One of my PC's has been running for more then 6 years (when I had to replace a hard drive) and I don't think the disk fragmentation reported by fsck has ever gone over 2%.

A filesystem check is performed on start up after so many boots or days. Just like windows and scandisk if your PC crashes or a orderly shutdown isn't performed a filesystem check will be done on the next boot. Journalized filesystems are better at recovering after crashes then an ext2 filesystem.

You don't need to run a scandisk (or fsck in the *nix case) on any FS with a journal. The journal will automatically recover any lost fragments. This includes ext3, ReiserFS, XFS, JFS, and even NTFS. I'm sure you're using one of those.


Basically with Linux (and *nix in general) is that as long as the system is working/running, it'll continue to work just as well for as long as you want. The only thing that'll stop it is if YOU break something. Windows on the otherhand naturally degrades. :P

I was pretty sure NTFS is not a journaling file system... does it have some other way of recovering lost sectors or am I just totally wrong?

Another note to add to my "linux is better than windows" list. That's f**king awesome, thanks every one.

Thats a joke.
Does unix change the harddisk tracks to bubble memory or what?

Linux uses very good disk drivers which manage through put lot better than Windows drivers. That foes not mean linux disks do not fragment.

Best way to de-fragment disks in any OS is to
1.take a coplete backup file based backup (with zip/tar etc not dd)
2.format the disk
3.Restore your contents on to the disk.

Re: Disk Maintenance on Linux
 

Regularly defragmenting disks with any utility will reduce the disk life slightly.
Best way is to backup files and restore them on any OS.

Technical explanayion:
Disks are made of magnetically polarized tracks. we create data on the disks by changing the polarization. Polarization change is efective only for a given number of cycles.

Regular Disk defragmenting software writes and rewrites a lot of file peices which will use up the polarization cycles and reduce the disk list to an extent.

Raja Surapaneni

i have my doubts
ive had a 10 gig drive since 1998? i think
and it has suffered daily defrags with windows 98 and xp due to downloading from p2p and i'm currently using it with linux instead.



but i do have a vfat32 drive in linux i do need to defrag that.

icurrently have to reboot my machineonce a week to defrag it in windows
any proggy to help?

I read once that for linux, since it is a multiuser system, it doesn't matter much if the disk is fragmented or not. Something about files being accessed randomly at the same time or something.

Random Access simply means that the disk can seek to any address instantly.... where as old sequential access memory (Like Casette Tapes) can only read the memory from start to finish, and require fast forwarding / rewinding to seek.

As for the Same time thing.... well, maybe you were hearing about milti-tasking ?

ANyways... the file system, is somthing linux will have advantage over windows for a long time.

MS is developeing WinFS. they dropped support for it in longhorn because of development times, but they are still planning on implementing it within the next 5 years... After that, it may be years before they even plan on implementing a replacement.

and for all the Hype around WinFS, all it is, is a Database system built ontop of sucky NTFS.