Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Fragmentation of my drives. Curious mostly

[Dale]

Nikos Chantziaras wrote:
> Nikos Chantziaras wrote:
>> Jorge Peixoto de Morais Neto wrote:
>>>>>> [...] what would be the best way to defrag it?
>>>>> By not defragging it.
>>>>> [...]
>>>> I don't buy into that argument and never did.  Every few months I
>>>> copy the
>>>> whole HD to another one and then back to counter fragmentation
>>>> (ext3) and
>>>> the system becomes noticeably faster after doing it (speed increase in
>>>> emerge --sync for example.)  Maybe it's not fragmentation but
>>>> rather related
>>>> files being more closely together after I do this.
>>>
>>> How exactly do you copy the files?  [...]
>>
>> I simply boot from the Gentoo DVD and rsync to another ext3
>> partition, wipe the current filesystem and then rsync back.
>
> OK, I once again verified that fragmentation seems to be a big issue
> even on Linux.  I just migrated to ext4, and in order to do that I had
> to rsync, format and rsync back.  The result is similar to the last
> time I did this (over 8 months ago):
>
> emerge --sync takes 15 seconds (at least 3 minutes yesterday)
> update-eix takes 2 seconds (20 seconds yesterday)
>
> And I don't believe it's due to ext4.  It's a nice speed-up from ext3,
> but not THAT nice.
>
>
>

Well, try as I may, I could not get mine past 10% on resiserfs. 
Fragmentation happens on any file system but I think the point is that
Linux doesn't get as bad as the windoze file system.  10% or so is not
to bad depending on the size of the files.  Files that are large will
have to be fragmented no matter what file system you use. 

I posted in another the reply right after a copy to another drive.  I
think that was before I even booted into the OS and was still on the
CD.  It is around 2% or so.  I doubt given that condition that it could
get any better. 

Dale

:-)   :-)