A few questions...

[J. Limon]

David Curtis wrote:
> On Wed, 08 Apr 2009 21:10:12 -0400
> "J. Limon" <jlimon at eml.cc> wrote:
>
>   
>> Roy Smith wrote:
>>     
>>> Hi Everyone!  Being fairly new to Ubunto and Linux in general, I've 
>>> got a few questions.  I've been using computers for a long time, 
>>> started out with a C-64, then progressed to an Amiga, and for the past 
>>> 11 years I've been using various versions of Windows.  Over the years 
>>> I've gotten accustomed to having to do various maintenance tasks with 
>>> the computer, such as checking the file system for errors, 
>>> defragmenting the drives and so on.  I've found a few programs to do 
>>> some of the things I'm accustomed to doing except I can't find where 
>>> you would defragment the drives.  Is it necessary?
>>>
>>>       
>> As long as you are using ext3 (which is the standard filesystem in 
>> Ubuntu), defragging is unnecessary.
>>     
>
> To play devil's advocate, all file systems will, to a greater or lesser degree, suffer from fragmentation. Ext3 will take a very long time for desktop use to produce performance reducing fragmentation, if at all. But even if you were running a server, say mail or news, that creates/deletes many many small files and produces some fragmentation, there still is no true tool to defragment an ext3 file system.  In other words, yes, there is the  possibility of a little bit of fragmentation, nothing you can do about it, don't worry about it, on a desktop you won't notice. Servers that constantly create/delete many many small files generally use other filesystem types geared toward that kind of use.
>
> Ext4, still considered 'testing' for ubuntu, is supposed to have a defrag tool, though I've never used it (neither ext4 or the defrag tool).
>
>   

Theoretically you *can* defrag if you're willing to unmount the volume, 
convert it to ext2, run ITS defrag tool, reconvert the volume back to 
ext3 and re-mount it.

But no sane person would ever do that.. right?

-- 
"If a problem can be solved there is no use worrying about it. If it can't be solved, worrying will do no good."