[wplug] File systems and Defrag

[Tom Rhodes]

On Thu, 16 Sep 2004 16:10:00 -0400
"Teodorski, Chris" <cteodorski at mahoningcountyoh.gov> wrote:

> After a coworker read the article about Sun's new file system ZFS
> (http://www.sun.com/2004-0914/feature/) a conversation about file
> systems started.  The meat of the conversation revolved around why
> Microsoft's OS all have file systems that need defragmenter and how come
> *nix file systems do not.  From what I've read it is not so much that
> *nix file systems do not fragment, but that they are virtually
> unaffected by this fragmentation.  Can anyone shed any additional light
> on this?  The information I've found online seems to contradict itself.

To my knowledge, minor fragmentation is unavoidable.

My personal opinion is that the Microsoft's file system designs
are extremely poor; look how long it took them to support
nested directories.  Current Microsoft is developing a new file
system, WINFS, but you won't see it for awhile.  I wouldn't
elevate my hopes over how much better it will be either.

-- 
Tom Rhodes