Does Linux ever need "defragging"?

Quakeboy02 · 12-15-2009, 09:03 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by sundialsvcs

(I know: I subscribed to BYTE Magazine at the time that the first discussion of it, and of the nascent system dubbed "MS-DOS," came out.

)

Yeah, but do you still have Volume 1 Number 1 of Byte magazine? I was given one by a friend and still have it.

Sadly, I misplaced my V1N1 Dr. Dobbs.

pixellany · 12-16-2009, 12:01 AM

Really big disk---let's say 500GB
Keep it no more that ~80% full---ie. about 100GB empty space
Even if you are regularly pushing around files of several GB each, it's hard to see how it would EVER get enough fragmented to need attention.

Buy BIG hard drives---use brain for something else.....

lazlow · 12-16-2009, 12:49 AM

jefro

The guy who wrote the app you linked to had a thread here shortly after he released it. After some odd comments I contacted his "references", they did not agree with his conclusions. One of them was the(major) guy who wrote ext3/4(as I recall). This is probably the "heated" thread referred to.

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...=lazlow+defrag

As long as one does not exceed 80% capacity(ballpark) of the drive, I do not think one will every have a real fragmentation issue on a ext3 drive.

jefro · 12-16-2009, 10:01 PM

It should not be heated at all.

Everyone agrees that it can become a problem. It is unlikely to affect common users. As I stated before we used to run tape every night and back to disk to prevent fragmentation. If one were to run a server farm and VM's and need to move data a lot then I think I'd pay attention to how long disks have been up.

This is all side stepping the original question. It was not relative it was basic and simple. The answer to the OP is still Yes in my opinion. It could happen.

lugoteehalt · 12-17-2009, 12:13 AM

tried to delete.