[mythtv-users] Defrag older Myth EXT3 filesystem

[Allen Edwards]

On Mon, Feb 25, 2013 at 9:03 AM, Joseph Fry <joe at thefrys.com> wrote:

>
> Thought I should start a new thread on this question.  I am having
>> problems with my older Myth 0.21 system running on Mythbuntu 8.04.  It has
>> EXT3 file systems.  It was suggested that my problem could be solved by
>> defragmenting the drives.
>>
>> How do you measure fragumention level?
>> How do you defragment?  Can it even be done?  I see that the latest
>> Mythbuntu install uses EXT4, which apparently has defrag built in.
>>
>
> To check fragmentation, see the link below.
>
> There is no Ext3 defrag tool that works on the filesystem level... but
> there are lots of ways to take advantage of the filesystem's method of
> preventing fragmentation.
>
> Essentially, if the file system has enough space to hold an entire file,
> it will reserve this space during the write.  Unfortunately because
> recordings grow rather than being written whole, they can often become
> fragmented because the file system cannot reserve space to hold the entire
> file.
>
> To "defrag" the file, simply create a copy of it and delete the original.
>  This only works well if the drive is not very full because there may not
> be enough contiguous free space to hold the new file in a filesystem that
> is nearly full, or was recently full with streamed data like recordings.
>
> Even better would be to move all of your recordings to an external drive,
> then move them back.
>
> Finally you can automate this 'defrag' with something like shake:
> http://www.webupd8.org/2009/10/defragmenting-linux-ext3-filesystems.htmlwhich ultimately does something very similar to the above file copy.
>
>
> Thanks.   I have the bootable CD ready to go.  Now I need the 2T drive
hooked up somewhere and I will be ready to test unmounted file systems and
move files to defrag them.

Allen
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