Re: File Fragmentation

Robert Heller wrote: 
  Cliff Hewitt <somebug@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
  In a message on Mon, 05 Dec 2005 16:25:15 GMT, wrote :

CH> Hey folks,
CH> CH> I understand that ext2 and ext3 are supposed to be better than FAT and CH> NTFS with respect to file fragmentation, but somehow I was under the CH> impression that there would be no fragmentation. Clearly, when I run 

Wrong.  Fragmentation happens and is *normal*.  What happens to the O/S
and disk I/O performance when it happens is a whole other issue...


Certainly.  That's why I'm interested in it.


CH> filefrag, I see some files with "discontinuit[ies]". I am interested in CH> knowing why the fragmentation happens, and what I can do to defragment. CH> I don't care much that fragmentation occurs, since I blindly accept CH> the statement "ext/x/ is better than FAT and NTFS," but I'd like to CH> understand it better for ext2 and 3.

Linux (and UNIX) file I/O works differently than MS-DOS/MS-Windows. The driver modules (both low-level disk drivers and file system
modules) optimize disk access to minimize disk head travel (seeks) in a
multi-user / multi-tasking environment. This is part of how they were
designed: from the ground up for a multi-user / multi-tasking environment.

So, these two file systems are designed with minimizing seek times versus, say, finding the largest continuous segment of free space?

... NTFS
was sort of an attempt at this, but because of the downward
compatibility requirements and basic mis-designs deep in MS-Windows NT,
NTFS is only marginally better than FAT in terms of performance issues
WRT fragmentation.

CH> CH> Thanks,
CH> CH> Cliff Hewitt
CH>

\/
Robert Heller ||InterNet: heller@xxxxxxxxxxxx
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Thanks again,

Cliff Hewitt
.

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