linux defrag - was: [NMLUG] Further advamtage of GHOST

[timothyemerick at yahoo.com (Tim Emerick)]

I've always been curious why linux doesn't require a defrag while MS windows
does.  I can understand the concept of file fragmentation during subsequent
writes/rewrites.  Why isn't linux succeptible to the same?  Is it the
filesystem or the way that linux writes data to the disk?

Tim

> > 
> > I know, you are all going to cry, "Linux doesn't need defragging!"
> > Well, not much, but it would be cool to include the service in a
> > cloning process.
> 
> I don't generall defrag my ext2/3 partitions but there is a util called
> defrag
> for ext2.
> 
> "defrag - ext2, minix and xiafs filesystem defragmenter
> 
> As a file system is used, data tends to become more and more scattered
> across the disk, degrading performance.  A disk defragmenter simply
> re-organises the data on the disk, so that individual files occupy a single
> sequential set of disk blocks, and all the free space on the disk is
> collected together in a single region. This generally means that reading a
> whole file is faster, and disk accesses in general are more efficient."
> 


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