defrag

[Stephen Partington]

technicaly its half true.

Modern Linux filesystem(s) keep fragmentation at a minimum by keeping all
blocks in a file close together, even if they can't be stored in
consecutive sectors. Some filesystems, like ext3, effectively allocate the
free block that is nearest to other blocks in a file. Therefore it is not
necessary to worry about fragmentation in a Linux system."

While ext3 is more resistant to file fragmentation than the FAT
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_Allocation_Table> filesystem, ext3 can
get fragmented over time or for specific usage patterns, like slowly
writing large files. Consequently, ext4 (the successor to ext3) has an
online filesystem defragmentation utility e4defrag and currently supports
extents <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extent_(file_systems)> (contiguous
file regions).


On Sat, Aug 16, 2014 at 11:48 AM, Michael Havens <bmike1 at gmail.com> wrote:

> I have been taught that a Linux file system doesn't fragment. HOwever I'm
> was looking at Linux from scratch (section 6.25.2) and have discovered that
> isn't true. A couple of the programs the e2fsprogs installs are:
>
> *e2freefrag*
>
> Reports free space fragmentation information
>
>
> and
>
>
>
>
>
>   *e4defrag*
>
> Online defragmenter for ext4 filesystems
>
> Well..... maybe I learned it doesn't need to be defragmented. However,
> e4defrag seems to indicate it does need to be defragged. Could I get some
> comments?
>
>  :-)~MIKE~(-:
>
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-- 
A mouse trap, placed on top of your alarm clock, will prevent you from
rolling over and going back to sleep after you hit the snooze button.

Stephen
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