Posted by: David Breakey
on October 15, 2003 06:07 AM
As with so many other things in the Un*x world, the issue of whether a filesystem needs defragmentation or not depends entirely on the circumstances of its use. I can't speak for other filesystems, but from what I've read of the Linux ext2 and ext3 whitepapers, they are both "designed to be resistant to fragmentation." To me, this means, simply, that users will generally find that defragmenting these filesystems results in, typically, trivial gains. Neither ext2 nor ext3 "automatically and continuously" defragment; this implies an active process. Instead, they use fragment layout algorithms that tend to discourage fragmentation in the first place. Hence, knowing how to defragment these filesystems can be a useful skill, although it's not likely to be a routine matter on a typical workstation.
As for the limitations of NTFS, I'm personally guessing that was due to so-called "legacy support" Then again, just because it's a journaled filesystem doesn't mean it will be any less prone to fragmentation. There's always the possibility that they did it deliberately, as an opportunity to make more money ("You want to effectively defrag your filesystem? Cough up $99.99, and the tool is all yours, for a year…"); then again, maybe I'm just paranoid<nobr> <wbr></nobr>;-)
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Re:Defragmentation
Posted by: David Breakey on October 15, 2003 06:07 AMAs with so many other things in the Un*x world, the issue of whether a filesystem needs defragmentation or not depends entirely on the circumstances of its use. I can't speak for other filesystems, but from what I've read of the Linux ext2 and ext3 whitepapers, they are both "designed to be resistant to fragmentation." To me, this means, simply, that users will generally find that defragmenting these filesystems results in, typically, trivial gains. Neither ext2 nor ext3 "automatically and continuously" defragment; this implies an active process. Instead, they use fragment layout algorithms that tend to discourage fragmentation in the first place. Hence, knowing how to defragment these filesystems can be a useful skill, although it's not likely to be a routine matter on a typical workstation.
As for the limitations of NTFS, I'm personally guessing that was due to so-called "legacy support" Then again, just because it's a journaled filesystem doesn't mean it will be any less prone to fragmentation. There's always the possibility that they did it deliberately, as an opportunity to make more money ("You want to effectively defrag your filesystem? Cough up $99.99, and the tool is all yours, for a year…"); then again, maybe I'm just paranoid<nobr> <wbr></nobr>;-)
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