Its because they're "fragmentation resistant" in the sense that they allocate space for files in an intelligent manner, instead of the "wherever the file fits" method that NTFS and FAT use. During use, they'll automatically defragment files as they're written. Contrast that to the FAT file system where the file system drivers don't do anything like that -- the files will be appended as needed, anywhere on the disk where there is room. AFAIK, NTFS has similar properties.
If your hard drive has many large files and/or is frequently greater then 95% usage, the file system drivers won't be able to effectively self-defragment the drive; in that case the recommended recourse is to do a full backup and restore. When the files are written back, they're written un-fragmented. http://www.linuxmafia.com/faq/Filesystems/defrag.html is a page that describes it better then I do. Jamie -----Original Message----- From: Jon Copeland [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: March 1, 2004 12:24 PM To: CLUG General Subject: [clug-talk] Linux Filesystems Why don't recent linux filesystems (reiserfs, ext2 etc) need to be 'defragged' like it's windows counterparts ntfs and fat? -j- _______________________________________________ clug-talk mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://clug.ca/mailman/listinfo/clug-talk_clug.ca _______________________________________________ clug-talk mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://clug.ca/mailman/listinfo/clug-talk_clug.ca
