Re: [expert] Defrag counterpart in MDK

[John Aldrich]

On Tue, 13 Jun 2000, you wrote:
> What does "(ext2) is designed properly, so there's no need" mean?
> 
> No filesystem can be designed to eliminate fragmentation.  If
> you are constantly "churning" on your disk, especially if your 
> disk is > 80% full, it *will* become fragged.  
> 
> Of course, high speed disks, high speed CPUs and lots of RAM 
> for cache will minimize fragmentation's effect...
> 
> Of course, since I have high speed disks, high speed CPUs and 
> lots of RAM for cache, and the disks are < 80% full, and I
> don't "churning" on my disks, I don't defrag my disks.
> 
The way that Linux allocates files, the filesystem
fragmentation is kept EXTREMELY low. If you do a manual
FSCK on your file system, you'll see at most 3-5%
non-contiguous, except in EXTREMELY rare situations. While
there ARE degrag utils for EXT2, they are generally not
necessary, as the O/S doesn't, as a rule, become fragmented
in the first place.
        John