Defrag in Linux?

glitch · 09-02-2002, 08:57 AM

I was wondering if there is a "defrag" program made for linux. Is there such a thing? Is it needed? Just wondering! Any feedback would be appreciated! Thanks.

- gLITch

MartBrooks · 09-02-2002, 09:04 AM

As a general rule, ext2 and ext3 (and related) filesystems do not need to be manually defragmented.

If the filesystem needs any kind of defragging this will be done at boot time during the fsck of the partition.

There are tools available to do this but, as I say, you should never need to manually intervene.

Regards

Thymox · 09-02-2002, 06:04 PM

The way that the ext2/ext3 (default) filesystems organise themselves, fragmentation is kept to a minimum. Usually fragmentation only occurs in these filesystems between 'files' that are of a size that is not perfectly divisible by the block size... it is not something that really needs to be worried about. There are threads floating around that go into greater depth on the hows and why of fragmentation, but for this thread, I'll leave it as for all intents and purposes, in general use, the Linux filesystems (ext2/ext3) do not become appreciably fragmented, so there is no real need to defrag your filesystems.