Defragment

Dovid · 04-26-2005, 10:02 AM

Hello All,
As you can tell from my name I am a newbie. I want to know the command to defrag in linux. Thanks.
Dovid

perfect_circle · 04-26-2005, 10:05 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Dovid
Hello All,
As you can tell from my name I am a newbie. I want to know the command to defrag in linux. Thanks.
Dovid

You do not need to do defragment in linux. No one does.

Padma · 04-26-2005, 11:15 AM

To put it more fully, the Linux Filesystem (ext2/ext3 at least) is designed more sensibly than the FAT filesystem used by Windows (and even better than ntfs, for that matter

). By its very nature, it doesn't have the fragmentation problems that Windows filesystems have. Since there is no fragmentation problem, there is no need for a defragger.

Rªdical_£D · 04-26-2005, 12:12 PM

But can you defrag from Linux? Or does Linux write to FAT partitions more efficiently than Windows? You see, I have a storage drive formated in FAT32 and I've been using it to store all of my torrent downloads. But the drive is almost topped off and I want to save as much space that I can. So can I (or do I have to) defrag from Linux? Or do I have to reboot under Windows and run Disc Defrag?

Harmaa Kettu · 04-26-2005, 01:46 PM

Here is a trick that does the job but requires a lot of extra disk space. This works also in Windows and is often faster than running defrag on a badly fragmented drive.

1. Move all files from the partition to somewhere else.
2. Reset the filesystem by umounting and then mounting it again. In Windows, you need to reboot the computer.
3. Move the files back. They will be arranged to the beginning of the partition without any fragmentation.