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I want to check whether my root drive requires a defragmentation. If requried I am planning to do this sudo e4defrag -c /dev/<my partition> I followed this method to analyze my disk.

sudo touch /forcefsck
sudo tune2fs -c 1 /dev/<my partition>

Then I rebooted my system but its showing nothing on my reboot and directly goes to the login page. How to analyze and defrag a drive in ubuntu 16.04?

Eka
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  • Have you considered downloading Bleachbit from the Ubuntu Software Centre? – graham Mar 31 '18 at 14:38
  • I did this `sudo bleachbit -c --preset` for clearing my system. But it exits after sometime with a error `filesystem root has 99 MB left`. Tried unchecking some options and rerun bleachbit but the problem still exists. Thats why I am not going to go bleachbit way – Eka Mar 31 '18 at 14:41
  • I suggest that you try to repair the root file system. Boot from another drive, for example an Ubuntu install drive (USB or DVD) and run an `e2fsck` command according to [this link](https://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2196858&p=13409986#post13409986). Scroll down to 'Repair linux file systems with linux tools'. – sudodus Mar 31 '18 at 15:26
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    Looks like the problem is your partition is full . Significant fragmentation is very rare in linux – Panther Mar 31 '18 at 17:19
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    `sudo fsck.ext2 -fn /dev/sdXY` will show fragmentation. The problem probably is your partition is full – Panther Mar 31 '18 at 17:27

1 Answers1

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Ubuntu doesn't need disk-defragmenting

From this article:

If you’re a Linux user, you’ve probably heard that you don’t need to defragment your Linux file systems. You’ll also notice that Linux distributions don’t come with disk-defragmenting utilities. But why is that?

To understand why Linux file systems don’t need defragmenting in normal use – and Windows ones do – you’ll need to understand why fragmentation occurs and how Linux and Windows file systems work differently from each other.

Community
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WinEunuuchs2Unix
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    Although very rare one can see significant fragmentation in Linux. This happens when the partition is full and the op suggests this may be the case – Panther Mar 31 '18 at 19:12
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    So, the answer (from the article) in case your drive is full and fragmented is: Free up some space (delete some files), copy remaining files to a new drive, erase the old drive, then copy the files back to the old drive. Voila! Fragmentation gone. Seems like there is room for improvement there. – John Feb 27 '21 at 10:11