[jamesbandido]

want to say goodbye to hard disk defragmentation ? then switch to LINUX ...

with more than a year since embracing linux, i found myself asking should i be performing a defrag similar to when i was a pure windows user ? i found out that linux doesnt even require a defrag since it doesn't write data to the disk in a "fragmenting" way.

the hard disk drives using windows systems can suffer so badly from file fragmentation that it can take a long time instead of a few seconds to display the information from, say, a database. therefore, it is essential to defragment hard drives running any version of Windows - regularly. usually it's a good idea to defragment the drive even when a defragmentation program reports that it's not necessary to run it.

running a defragmentation program is usually a time-consuming business. but what programs can be used to defragment a linux hard disk drive? the news is good. believe it or not, you don't have to worry about it. of course it can be done. there's almost always a way to achieve anything in linux, but it's unnecessary because linux is designed to handle fragmentation as it manages the files. therefore, a computer running linux will almost never have to make excessive page-file searches when opening a program due to the fragmentation of the files on the hard drive. if the hard drive is working hard (page-filing to the swap file), install more ram and/or make sure that you have enough space on the hard drive. at least 10% free space seems to be a working rule of thumb. there should be no need to defragment the drive.

here's a good technical read ... its quite lengthy but its worth it ...

http://geekblog.oneandoneis2.org/ind..._defragmenting