On Sat, 21 Aug 2004 05:30:45 -0700 (PDT) ti@amb.org (Ti Kan) wrote:
A full defrag of a windows filesystem (both FAT and NTFS) not only defragments files, but moves all files toward the beginning of the disk, so that the end of the disk is all free space (assuming that the disk is not full). This then allows reduction of the filesystem size without loss of data. If you're growing the filesystem then a defrag is probably not necessary.
A completely defrag'ed filesystem is easier to repair/recover if a catastrophic error occur. This is not entirely the case any longer. There is certainly some benefit to defragmenting the Windows file systems, but I believe that Partition Magic will take care of that during the move/resize operations.
Of course, Linux filesystems rarely require the use of a degragmenter.
If blocks are allocated and used near the end of a Linux filesystem's partition, then I don't think you could reduce its size without the equivalent of a defragment operation. The aim here is not so much to make files contiguous, but to make as much contiguous free space as possible at the end of the partition. Is there such a thing as a defragmenter for any of Linux's filesystems? This is not true, blocks may be allocated anywhere in the file system. The partitioner must take care of moving files no matter where they lie in the file system. Linux and Unix file systems make an effort to reduce fragmentation. There is one defragmenter that I am aware of.
So, My question still remains, do the partitioners require that the
Windows file systems be defragmented before the partitioning operation.
--
Jerry Feldman