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>>> [...] what would be the best way to defrag it? |
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>> |
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>> By not defragging it. |
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>> |
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>> It's not Windows. Windows boxes needs defragging not because fragmentation |
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>> is a huge problem in itself, but because windows filesystems are a steaming |
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>> mess of cr@p that do little right and most things wrong. Defrag treats the |
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>> symptom, not the cause :-) |
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> |
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> I don't buy into that argument and never did. Every few months I copy the |
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> whole HD to another one and then back to counter fragmentation (ext3) and |
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> the system becomes noticeably faster after doing it (speed increase in |
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> emerge --sync for example.) Maybe it's not fragmentation but rather related |
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> files being more closely together after I do this. |
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|
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How exactly do you copy the files? Be careful not to lose some file |
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property. How about sparse files, for example? |
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AFAIK, you can make a complete backup of a filesytem with (as root, |
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running from another system - such as a liveCD) |
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$ cd /path/to/mountpoint |
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$ tar -cSv -f /path/to/tarball.tar . |
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|
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But I am not sure. |