Roberto Armenteros wrote: > This is just a curiosity. Windows computers need to be > fragmented very often. On the other hand, I once read > somewhere that disk fragmentation in linux wasnt > recomended "I am not how true this is." The fact is > that disk fragmentation in linux is not often spoken > about. Is there something special about the way linux > handles the disk so it can have this privilege? I > would appreciate anyinsight about this.
Roberto, I've edited your first couple sentences to be more accurate: This is just a curiosity. Windows computers need to be *defragmented* very often. On the other hand, I once read somewhere that disk defragmentation in linux *is not required*. Fragmentation is a bad thing. Disks under Windows get fragmented, meaning that pieces of a single file get scattered in different places on the disk -- among other things it makes access slower. So, you must *defragment* Windows disks which tries to put the pieces (fragments) of a file all in one place, in the right order. For reasons I don't fully understand, Linux files systems typically don't get fragmented as easily, and hence don't need to be defragmented very often if ever. However, fragmentation does occur, and some Linux file systems (at least one of the journaled file systems) has a utility for defragementing it. BTW, the fragmentation in Windows occurs on FAT16 and FAT32 partitions. I don't know whether fragmentation occurs on NTFS4 or NTFS5 file systems. Randy Kramer
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