> 3. Is backing up the partition, deleting it, then restoring the only way > to deferment a ext3 partition? Currently, yes. There was a defrag tool written way back in 1993 (!) and doesn't seem anyone's seen fit to update it since. (That should tell you something) Apparently it only worked with 1k sectors, with 4k being the norm now, you're out of luck. Though, with pretty much any filesystem, the rate of fragmentation increases exponentially (and thus general performance drops) the less free space you have. At around %80-%90 full, it starts to become quite significant, depending on how busy your FS, file sizes, etc. Even the best allocator can only do so much with no headroom to work with. (And with a bad allocator, it only gets worse, *coughWindowscoughFATcough*) With today's common 20gb to 200gb hard drives, that means leaving at least 2gb to 20gb (!) free. -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 189 bytes Desc: This is a digitally signed message part Url : http://shadowknight.real-time.com/pipermail/tclug-list/attachments/20030926/9512bb89/attachment.pgp