Ubuntu question for Neil.

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aristide1
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Ubuntu question for Neil.

Post by aristide1 » Sun Oct 21, 2007 12:54 pm

Is there a defrag tool or maintainance tools for Ubuntu?

floffe
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Post by floffe » Sun Oct 21, 2007 2:38 pm

Short answer: It's not needed.

Longer answer: Linux is smart enough to first attempt to guess the size of a newly created file, and hence reserve that much space for it, and then when reading re-order the requests instead of having to move the files physically. That's one of the advantages of being built on a multi-user base.

For en even longer answer, see this post.

Now, a couple of new and fancy file-systems add a background defragmenter (that might also do other things), but for the most common filesystems it's simply not needed, at least in the sense that the system loses a lot of performance if it's not regularly defragged.
Last edited by floffe on Mon Oct 22, 2007 3:58 pm, edited 1 time in total.

NeilBlanchard
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Post by NeilBlanchard » Mon Oct 22, 2007 8:32 am

G'Day,

I'm glad you know the answer, 'cuz I don't! :o

That's good to know...

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