parted seems to have the ability to resize a fat32 partition, i wonder what shrinking/regrowing would accomplish ;-\

-- OR --

Rather than attempting to understand fat32 well enough to write a defragger, I wonder if it could be done like this:

1. Modify the Linux fat32 driver so that it has the option of allocating file space near the high cyls, rather than near cyl 0 as someone mentioned it does. Look at the code snippet from fat_add_cluster() pasted below. Could it be as easy as changing the loop to run from high to low?

2. Mount the filesystem with the "high-alloc" option enabled, and one-by-one copy each file and remove the old one. This process should empty all the low cylinders.

3. Remount the filesystem with the "high-alloc" disabled, and repeat the copy process. As the files move back to the low cylinders, there are no existing files to get in their way, so they are allocated contiguously.

nr = limit; /* to keep GCC happy */
for (count = 0; count < limit; count++) {
nr = ((count + MSDOS_SB(sb)->prev_free) % limit) + 2;
if (fat_access(sb, nr, -1) == 0)
break;
}

You write the app, we'll test it.

Heh ...

Insulting people when proved wrong has always worked? :}

Cheers,
Tink

Sorry Tinkster, that quote wasn't for you.

Cool a war on filesystem fragging

Cool

I might not be wise, but you're still wrong ;)


Cheers, anyway :)
Tink

"a credentials dicksize war is usually a bad idea on the net."

Bert

:}

Now you got me really curious!

How does the fact that ext2 doesn't have
a variable size for allocation units relate
to the size of a dick?

Cheers,
Tink

/sbin/fsck hda1

will defragment your drive

Hi !
Let me make a newbie question: there's a defrag tool for ext3?

Ext3 doesn't need defragging because it doesn't fragment in the first place.

Ext3 does fragment and there is a defragging tool,too.It's called defrag.But you better check it out good - I am not sure if it also works with ext3.It's originally for ext2.

Yeah, ext3 frags to such a small extent, however, that it is not really worth mentioning. You could reduce the amount of fragmenting by reducing the block-size, but that trades off the amount of space you'll have to store files. Swings and roundabouts. For all intents and purposes, ext3 does not fragment.

There is some info about this at http://www.rbi.informatik.uni-frankf...ides/reiserfs/
But the link doesn't work.Which leads to the question:How do you delete a post?

404ing that, buddy. Would be good to read, though. Sound interesting.