Nikos Chantziaras wrote: > Nikos Chantziaras wrote: >> Jorge Peixoto de Morais Neto wrote: >>>>>> [...] what would be the best way to defrag it? >>>>> By not defragging it. >>>>> [...] >>>> I don't buy into that argument and never did. Every few months I >>>> copy the >>>> whole HD to another one and then back to counter fragmentation >>>> (ext3) and >>>> the system becomes noticeably faster after doing it (speed increase in >>>> emerge --sync for example.) Maybe it's not fragmentation but >>>> rather related >>>> files being more closely together after I do this. >>> >>> How exactly do you copy the files? [...] >> >> I simply boot from the Gentoo DVD and rsync to another ext3 >> partition, wipe the current filesystem and then rsync back. > > OK, I once again verified that fragmentation seems to be a big issue > even on Linux. I just migrated to ext4, and in order to do that I had > to rsync, format and rsync back. The result is similar to the last > time I did this (over 8 months ago): > > emerge --sync takes 15 seconds (at least 3 minutes yesterday) > update-eix takes 2 seconds (20 seconds yesterday) > > And I don't believe it's due to ext4. It's a nice speed-up from ext3, > but not THAT nice. > > >
Well, try as I may, I could not get mine past 10% on resiserfs. Fragmentation happens on any file system but I think the point is that Linux doesn't get as bad as the windoze file system. 10% or so is not to bad depending on the size of the files. Files that are large will have to be fragmented no matter what file system you use. I posted in another the reply right after a copy to another drive. I think that was before I even booted into the OS and was still on the CD. It is around 2% or so. I doubt given that condition that it could get any better. Dale :-) :-)
