No, but it would be very usefull if the most experienced ppl on this mail list would give us an explanation or some usefull links on this matter, why ext doesn`t need defragmentation ... Thanks in advance for your understanding.
It's very simple, and not exclusive to Linux - it goes back to the early days of Unix.
The best way to think of it is that your filesystem is one of those folders that has a separate plastic envelope for each page. Imagine you're a secretary who has to store documents in such a folder. To start off, you put in the first document at the beginning, then the second document after it, and so on.
The difference comes when you bin some documents (delete files). If you're a Unix/Linux secretary, and you have a ten-page document, you look for the first empty space in the folder that has at least ten envelopes and put your document there. If you're a Windows secretary, you start filing the document in the first empty space you find, even if it only has three envelopes. You then look for another empty space, and file the next few pages of your document, and so on. Eventually, the documents in your foder are so spread out and mixed up that you have to take them all out and put them back in some kind of order (defragmentation). Stupid, isn't it?
Sir Robin
-- "Some guy breaking into a government computer system and wreaking havoc makes for a more interesting movie plot than some guy writing device drivers. It's hard to work in a good 10-minutes car chase scene with some guy who writes device drivers..." - tjc, post to LWN
Robin Turner IDMYO Bilkent Univeritesi Ankara 06533 Turkey
www.bilkent.edu.tr/~robin
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