How do I defrag a fat32 mount on Linux?

[aceO07]

I have Slackware 11 running on my laptop and I rarely boot into Windows anymore. However use a big fat32 partition since it will make my life easier if anything happens to linux. As that is my primary storage space, how do I defrag it when I'm in linux?

 

[postmortemIA]

no such thing in linux.

 

[pcgeek11]

Boot into Windows, run the defragmentation utility on that partition and then reboot back into Linux.

pcgeek11

 

[Nothinman]

Tar it all up and restore it, I don't think anyone's written a defrag tool for vfat yet.

 

[aceO07]

I don't really have the space needed to relocate or compress it all up somewhere and move it back. I understand how that'd worked, but just don't have the space to do it.

Would it be possible to vmware a windows session and access that partition in windows to defrag it, while in linux? 🙂

 

[Nothinman]

So copy the files to new names one by one, it'll take longer and won't have the same effect as a full defrag but it won't hurt either.

The VMWare idea is possible, you can give VM's access to raw partitions, but I've never tried it.

 

[aceO07]

Originally posted by: Nothinman
So copy the files to new names one by one, it'll take longer and won't have the same effect as a full defrag but it won't hurt either.

The VMWare idea is possible, you can give VM's access to raw partitions, but I've never tried it.

Do you know if linux would have a fit if I was defraging the raw partition while it was still mounted under linux?

 

[Nothinman]

Do you know if linux would have a fit if I was defraging the raw partition while it was still mounted under linux?

Most definitely, I'd even be surprised if VMWare let you allocate a raw partition to a VM that was mounted.

 

[Brazen]

Originally posted by: Nothinman

Do you know if linux would have a fit if I was defraging the raw partition while it was still mounted under linux?

Most definitely, I'd even be surprised if VMWare let you allocate a raw partition to a VM that was mounted.

I'm pretty certain VMWare WILL allow it, but it is definately NOT a good idea unless you are using some sort of clustering services. In your case, you will definately want to umount the partition before allocating it to the virtual machine otherwise you could really bork it up.