Fat32 Defrag Program

[Tom--d]

hello,

Are there any Defrag programs for FAT32. Its for my external Hard drive.
Would prefer if it was in the repositories.


Thanks,
Tom

[Pro-reason]

You could try shake. I think it works for any filesystem.

You could also just defrag while you are on Windows.

Or reformat the drive as ext3 if you don't use Windows.

[nicedude]

I looked around on the web and couldn't find anything that defrags FAT32 while in linux so I think your best bet would be to either use a windows box to defrag it or to copy the data to somewhere else and make the portable a ETX3 or NTFS partition and then copy it back. If you know where you can lay your hands on a copy of partition magic ( a commercial partition program that boots on cd ) then it can convert your FAT32 to NTFS while there is data on it, but even then I wouldn't bet my life on no data loss ( so backing up somewhere else would still be a good idea )

hope this helps

[Pro-reason]

Why would you convert to NTFS?

[rockerphil]

Or reformat the drive as ext3 if you don't use Windows.

agreed, i'd personally back up what data is on the external and then reformat it to an ext3 partition, Linux plays a lot nicer with it than a FAT system, and ext2/ext3 doesn't fragment

[Paqman]

Why would you convert to NTFS?

Why wouldn't you? It's a much more modern, efficient file system than FAT32, while still retaining compatibility with Win boxes. The only reason to use FAT32 is if you need Linux/Mac/Win compatibility.

[Sef]

agreed, i'd personally back up what data is on the external and then reformat it to an ext3 partition, Linux plays a lot nicer with it than a FAT system, and ext2/ext3 doesn't fragment

It can defragment, but it is usually not a problem unless your hard disk is more than 90% full.

[Pro-reason]

Why wouldn't you? It's a much more modern, efficient file system than FAT32, while still retaining compatibility with Win boxes. The only reason to use FAT32 is if you need Linux/Mac/Win compatibility.

I was thinking that if he was going to be regularly connecting it to Windows, then there'd be no reason to change anything (he could defrag there), and if he was not really going to be using it with Windows, he could give it a native Linux format, making defragging largely unnecessary. With NTFS, he'd have the hassle of reformating, he'd still have to defrag it, there would still not be good defrag utilities for it on Linux, and there would be occasional glitches using it with Linux (see this forum for NTFS mount problems). Plus NTFS is evil.

[Tom--d]

The reason I have it on Fat32 is I have a xbox360 and would like to play things off the hard drive.

Should I have NTFS or keep it as Fat32?

[lisati]

Why wouldn't you? It's a much more modern, efficient file system than FAT32, while still retaining compatibility with Win boxes. The only reason to use FAT32 is if you need Linux/Mac/Win compatibility.

I don't know if Win98 can cope with NTFS without help....