Re: [gentoo-user] [Waaay OT] Defrag tool for windoze

[J. Roeleveld]

On Tuesday 16 November 2010 10:53:28 Alex Schuster wrote:
> J. Roeleveld writes:
> > On Tuesday 16 November 2010 03:33:19 Dale wrote:
> > > That's not doable here tho.  This is a Linux only house.  My nieces
> > > puter is the only puter in the house with windoze on it and it is
> > > just visiting.  It does have NTFS so I am sort of chicken to hook it
> > > up to my Linux box.  It would be just my luck that it screwed up
> > > something.  I would mount it read only to save data but scared to do
> > > any writing to it.
> >
> > emerge sys-fs/ntfs3g
> >
> > I use it to read and write from/to NTFS drives without problems. The
> > in-kernel one appears to be ok as well.
>
> Doesn't the in-kernel one have only very basic write support? Like,
> modifying files only if the size stays the same?

Not sure, I'm running current kernels (2.6.30+) and have on occasion 
accidentally used the ink-kernel one and then copied file around.
I didn't loose any data with that.

but I agree, ntfs-3g seems to be the more reliable one for this.

> > > I did reboot that thing.  It does boot and it boots a lot faster now.
> > > It appears it was fragmented pretty badly.  The error messages about
> > > software that used to pop up don't pop up when it boots now either.
> > > Maybe AVG did clean out some stuff.  I'm not holding my breath but
> > > maybe it will last the kids a little while at least.
> >
> > It should, but just in case, take a backup of the whole drive (dd
> > if=/dev/kidsdrive of=/backupofkidsdrive)
> >
> > That way you can always restore it quickly for them ;)
>
> There is also the ntfsclone command in sys-fs/ntfsprogs.

True, except that I was thinking of backup up the whole drive, including the 
boot-sector. It's a bigger backup, but I have never had a stable system after 
just restoring the filesystem for a MS Windows system.
Not sure if this has improved with current systems, but last time I tried it, 
it didn't work.

--
Joost