Date: Mon, 26 Mar 2001 16:14:50 -0500 From: Bill Moran <wmoran@iowna.com> To: dyu@cdknet.com Cc: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: defragment... Message-ID: <3ABFB14A.EF4E0A28@iowna.com> References: <002501c0b62b$64ddf290$1900a8c0@glass>
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dyu wrote: > > hi all, > > I was wondering, is it necessary to defrag my FreeBSD server drives one in a > while like in Windows? > if so, what command or software is good? > thanks, No, the FFS (the filesystem that FreeBSD uses) defragments itself on the fly during normal operation and needs no manual defragmentation. There are (supposedly) some weird usage circumstances where this doesn't work properly and the filesystem can get pretty disorganized, but this usually happens only when the filesystem is very close to full. As long as you keep a good percentage of free space, there's no problem (see "man tunefs" for more details) If it does get messy and need fixed, you'll need backup your data, reformat the filesystem and restore to defrag. This happens pretty seldom and there's really no need for a defrag tool. The upshot is that the filesystem doesn't really need any regular maintenance. If you're curious about technical details, the file /usr/share/doc/papers/diskperf.ascii.gz has a really interesting writeup on how it works. -Bill To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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