Ubuntu

defragment hard disk

Asked by wordsmyth

As a Windows user, I was accustomed to defragmenting my hard disk drive at regular intervals. But there appears to be no provision for this in Ubuntu 8.10. Am I missing something???

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Savvas Radevic
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Arnaudus (a-lerouzic) said : 		#1

Hi,

Defragmenting is unnecessary with Linux file systems (ext2 / ext3). The file system is clever and tries not to split the files in too many parts. You don't need to bother about this any longer.

In practice, this is not 100% true, especially when the partition is full. However, there is no good defrag tool for Linux (they are dangeruous to use). In any case, most of the time, the fragmentation rate remains below 3%, which is just OK.

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Sam_ (and-sam) said : 		#2

add:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/LinuxFilesystemsExplained

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Best Savvas Radevic (medigeek) said : 		#3

If you're looking on how to keep your system "fast" and "clean", you don't have to :)
GNU/Linux is much more stable compared to a Windows operating system and it usually does not need that kind of maintenance.

From the top of my head, the only thing you could do is to lower the boot number that triggers the e2fsck program.
See: https://answers.edge.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+question/31706

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wordsmyth (wordsmyth-netspace) said : 		#4

Thanks Savvas Radevic, that solved my question.