For that matter, "defragmenting" is no longer an issue with
Windows' modern filesystems, either!
Curiously, many off-the-shelf drives when you purchase them have been pre-formatted ... with an MS-DOS-era (FAT) filesystem! (I guess the manufacturers do this to keep technical-support costs down, so they don't have to explain what "formatting" means. And there
is a certain amount of wisdom in that...
)
{Note: "FAT" =
File
Allocation
Table. Referring to the original filesystem format for Microsoft MS-DOS.}
The bottom-line is simple: when you buy a new drive and put it into service, whether on Windows or on Linux or on OS/X,
format it. This will install a (blank...) filesystem with the operational characteristics that you need. Any operating-system will have a recommended default ("ext3" is a fine choice for Linux).
All of these filesystems will never require "defragmenting."
Modern systems also routinely provide the concept of
journaling, which simply means that if your computer "crashes," it doesn't have to verify the hard-drive on restart: the journal allows the state of the hard-drive to be instantly recovered. ("ext
3" adds this capability to "ext
2"
without change to the disk format... it's upward-compatible and therefore definitely essential.)
All modern operating systems (including Windows, and OS/X, and Linux) provide for the concept of "installable file systems." In other words, they are not limited to just one arrangement of organizing a hard-drive into files and directories, but are capable of supporting one or several disk formats (on different disk volumes...) at the same time. The FAT-based formats will probably be with us until the end of time if only for backward-compatibility reasons, but there is no viable reason to use them for new drives
today.
I recently bought a Windows-based laptop and was quite
stunned to see that the system had been formatted with a moderate-sized NTFS partition for the main system ... and a large
FAT(!!) partition! Since I had possessed the wisdom of also purchasing a Windows-XP retail DVD-ROM at time of purchase, I promptly reformatted the drive ... all of it ... and did a custom-install of XP-SP2 on the single NTFS partition that this poor laptop obviously always
should have had. {Never assume that computer-vendors make intelligent decisions. They know they might be selling a computer to your grandmother, and they base a lot of their plans on "making darn sure that 'your grandmother' won't call for technical support!" Yeah, retail margins are
that thin.}