[Sussex] Why Linux doesn't need defrag

[Steven Dobson]

John

On Thu, 2006-08-17 at 14:52 +0100, John Crowhurst wrote:
> On Thu, August 17, 2006 12:29, linux at oneandoneis2.org wrote:
> >
> > http://geekblog.oneandoneis2.org/index.php/2006/08/17/why_doesn_t_linux_need_defragmenting
> >
> > I *think* I got the basic details right, but I'm not absolutely sure,
> > so any feedback would be appreciated.
> 
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defragmentation
> 
> Note that ext2, ext3, minix, xiafs, JFS and XFS have defrag programs
> associated with them.

What are the program name?  I can't find them with "man -k defrag".

> It seems that as Linux and Unix in general passes its file and disk
> handling to underlying drivers, some of these formats require
> defragmentation.

But, generally. that defragmentation code is written into the filesystem
code in *nux, but is a separate program in win32land.  I kinda think
that is the reason.  All disks need defraging.  If you defrag as you
write noramlly it is a small overhead on your disk output, but if it is
a seperate program to be run by the user then the disk performance can
suffer and the defrag time become significant.

Steve


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