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Drive defragmentation in Linux

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by holt

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I have read that disk drives don't need to be defragmented in Linux. I find this a little difficult to believe. Can anyone explain what makes an ext2 partition immune to fragmentation?

If this is NOT true and I do need to be defragging my drives, can you recommend a utility for doing this?

Thanks in advance.

4 replies

by joe prochazka

There are defrag utilities for ext2. one can be found here:
http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/system/filesystems/

I never installed a defrag utility for ext2 though never needed it even with systems where the drive is so full that there is only space to write log files :).

ext2 does an excellect job on its own at keeping files from fragmenting all over the drive. ext2 contains extra code to keep fragmentation reduced even in very
full file systems.

I would say if you feel you need to run a defrag program go ahead they are out there. But personally i feel it would be a waste of time and system resources ext2 does a good enough job on it own.

by joe prochazka

BTW Was just reading through the README in the tar ball for defrag.

ftp://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux/system/filesystems/defrag-0.70.tar.gz

This README contains a more in depth look into how the ext2 file system works interesting place to startreading about how ext2 works.

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