In this article I will discuss this very issue and then I will show you how you can test the fragmentation of a mount point on your Linux drive and then defragment that mount point.

What it isn’t necessary

This is the question I get nearly every time I tell a user that it is not necessary to defrag a Linux drive. The first and foremost reason you do not have to defrag a system is that the majority of files on a system need super-user permission to move. Oh sure you can move anything you want around in your ~/ directory. But try to move anything in /usr/bin, /opt, /sbin or any other directory outside of ~/ (without super user permission) and see how far you get. What this means is that during general, every-day usage the vast majority of files are not being moved around on your system. The only files you really need concern yourself with are the ones in your home directory – and those files have little to nothing to do with the performance of your machine.

Another difference is that some other operating systems try their best to place files as close the front of the drive as they can – without gaps. When files get moved around, these gaps appear, making it hard for the drive to be read. The Linux operating system does not do this. Instead the system starts in the center and places files not in a random fashion, but doesn’t concern itself with placing files next to one another in the start of the drive. So when spaces are created it’s not a big deal because the system is used to those spaces. The only time you will notice defragmentation on a Linux drive is when the drive is over 95% full. At that point the seeming “randomness” of placement will have caught up and the spaces between files might not allow for the addition of more files.

So when this happens…is it possible to defragment? Yes it is.

Fragmentation check

I discovered a very handy Perl script that will allow you to check a mount point for fragmentation. The script can be found here in the discussion. Copy that code into a file called fragmentation.pl and give that file executable permissions with the command chmod u+x fragmentation.pl. Now issue the command:

sudo ./fragmentation.pl /home/USER

Where USER is the user who’s home directory you want to check.

You will most likely be surprised at how how low the number is. It will give you a report like:

1.30108895488615% non contiguous files, 1.01067741479282 average fragments.

Defragging

Now, say you do want to defragment that home directory. You can do so with this handy piece of code. Save that piece of code in a file called defrag.pl and give it executable permissions with the command chmod u+x defrag.pl. Now issue the command:

sudo ./defrag.pl /home/USER

Where USER is the user who’s home directory you want to defragment.

Now this task can take some time, depending upon the size of your ~/ and how much is in that directory. But once it is done, issue the fragmentation.pl command again and I bet you will find the results positive.

Final thoughts

Although you will most likely never have to run this, it is nice to know that it is possible. The Linux system rarely gets fragmented to the point you will ever notice the slightest hiccup…at least not until that drive is nearly full. And considering the cost to size ratio of today’s drives, the possibility of them filling up is slim. And if they do, you’ll probably just go out and buy another drive.

The following article explains how to repair defragment in Windows Vista. It will also mention alternatives in case the repair does not succeed. The following error messages are symptomatic: “The Disk Defragmenter is not installed on your computer” or “Windows cannot connect to the Disk Defragmenter engine”. The suggest help topics do not help in this case.

The first thing that can be done is to register two dynamic link libraries (dlls) again. This can be done by opening a command prompt as an administrator and typing in the following commands:


regsvr32 dfrgsnap.dll
regsvr32 dfrgui.dll


You might need to switch to the system32 directory first in the command line using cd /windows/system32/.

The second option is to reinstall the defragment tool completely. Locate the file dfrg.inf in the /windows/inf/ directory. Right-click it and select Install from the menu.

Alternatives To The Windows Defragmenter:

There are two possible alternatives. You can try and start the Dos defragmenter by typing in defrag.exe or install a third party disk defragmentation tool like disk defrag.

However I came across Piriform Defraggler the other day and I was interested in one feature it had… individual file and folder defragmentation. At first I thought this was pretty superfluous considering it would be difficult to notice much of an effect defragmenting a single file or folder…  however I have a laptop and not a huge hard drive so a complete defragment doesn’t take huge amount of time anyway.

If you have a large hard drive however then this could be a very useful tool. I’m thinking of large music collections or DVD rips which go into the hundreds of gigabytes worth of space.

Using Piriform Defraggler to defragment just your music or video collection could have some kind of small effect on performance. Apart from this it has all the other basic features and even a nice monitoring tool which for some strange reason was omitted from the Vista defragmentation application.

Unfortunately there are no scheduling options but it’s simple and works fast enough to keep most people happy.

For anything more advanced I recommend IOBit Smart Defrag. This has the kind of scheduling options you may be looking for as well the ability to defragment and optimise multiple hard drive partitions.

The best thing about Smart Defrag is that it can be set to start up whenever the computer is left idle. I think schedules are a pain as you might in the middle of something when a scheduled task starts up so instead running when the computer is idle is the best solution.

You need a software called GFCScape to do this. It’s just a small application that requires the Windows .net Framework 2 to run. Run GFCScape after installing it and click on File > Open in the menu. Navigate to your steamapps folder on your hardrive and select one of the files in the list.

All games benefit from defragmenting the files starting with source 2007 while defragmenting the files named like the games benefit only those games. GFCScape will load the file and display information about its contents. Click on View > Columns to add the Fragmentation column to the menu.

Every value greater than 0,0 means that the file is fragmented and will benefit from defragmentation. To be able to defragment the files you need to enable Write Access which can be done in Options > Write Access.

I had to load a new file afterwards to be able to defragment it. To start the defragmentation of the files click on Tools > Defragment. This should only take a matter of seconds and display the fragmentation score of 0,0 after loading the game again.

This way you are able to fragment games like Counter Strike Source, Half-life 2 and Team Fortress 2 resulting in a speed up.

Read More:

GCFScape Download

Page Defrag can defragment all files open for exclusive access at the next system boot or even at every boot. Information about the process and results are printed directly on screen which is excellent to see if the defragmentation was successful or if any errors occurred doing so.

You can naturally run Page Defrag again in Windows to check the defragmentation level of those files as well. It is not necessary to us the software if your defragmentation tool offers this option as well.

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Page Defrag