[Sluglug] new to the list

[Peter Belew]

Hi -

On 10/3/05, cerise at armory.com <cerise at armory.com> wrote:
> Huh. I guess the parted on my Gentoo disc is old.  I knew it
> was just a matter of time, but I didn't expect it that soon.

 My understanding is that parted (and the GUI versions) have
been getting improvements like that fairly rapidly.

>
> Incidentally, the reason NTFS does that is performance.  It's
> much better to have files spread around a disk.  That way it's
> likely that the head is over a file at any given time.

 Or that there's free space under a head (or nearby) at any
given time.

>
> It's actually better if you interleave the files somewhat so
> that the buffer can be emptied before reading the next part
> of the file, but the last people to do that were IBM in the 70s
> AFAIK.

 Well, it was still being done in the '80s from my experience.

>
> The only reason FAT* had an obsession with the front of the disk
> is because it needed to be able to create blocks of arbitrary
> size quickly.  Having a nice solid chunk of free space makes
> that task easy.

 Yes.
>
> Of course, a real filesystem defrags itself automatically.

 Here the question is "what does 'defrag' really mean?". It can mean
just making all the blocks of a file contiguous, which makes random
access to the file simpler. Or it can mean moving files down toward
the "beginning" of a disk, which makes allocating big contiguous files
simpler; and for the purposes of  this discussion it makes it simpler
to split partitions. Or it can mean some combination of both.

 - Peter
>
> -Phil/CERisE
>
> On Mon, Oct 03, 2005 at 01:21:17PM -0700, Peter Belew wrote:
> > There's not really a problem with NTFS. My laptop was
> > originally formatted with an NTFS partition, and the
> > parted variant I used had no problem splitting it.
> >
> > One annoyance, though, is that the defrag for NTFS doesn't
> > try to move all the files towards the beginning of the disk -
> > it pretty much defrags files in place.  So if a disk is pretty
> > full, things can get messy.
> >
> > - Peter
> >
> > On 10/3/05, cerise at armory.com <cerise at armory.com> wrote:
> > > Assuming that it's not NTFS.  If you're running NTFS, then things
> > > get messy =/
> > >
> > > -Phil/CERisE
> > >
> > > On Mon, Oct 03, 2005 at 12:34:05PM -0700, Peter Belew wrote:
> > > > Yes, this is in fact easy. Before starting the Linux stuff, you want
> > > > to defrag your disk (partitions) with the XP defragment utiity.
> > > >
> > > > If you're free this evening, there's a SMAUG meeting tonight
> > > > in Capitola, you can get help at that.
> > > >
> > > >   http://www.scruz.org/
> > > >
> > > > Ignore the meeting date on the page; but the location is correct.
> > > > We're meeting every Monday night now at Tiny's. Usually
> > > > a few people show up with their laptops, either installing stuff
> > > > or gaming on ancient laptops without GUIs, or some other
> > > > such activity.
> > > >
> > > > A ride could be provided. The attendees include some current
> > > > and former SlugLUG people. SlugLUG hasn't had much in
> > > > the way of meetings in the last year, and only about 1 or 2
> > > > installfests a year, as well. And, as you say, the list activity
> > > > is a little slow.
> > > >
> > > > Some variant on parted or nparted will do the partitioning, once
> > > > the XP partition is defragged.
> > > >
> > > > - Peter Belew
> > > >
> > > > On 10/3/05, Patrick Brede <pbrede at ucsc.edu> wrote:
> > > > > Hi everybody. My name is Patrick Brede and i'm a first
> > > > > year cs major. I just joined the list, and it seems like
> > > > > nothing is happening on it. Is this true? The site
> > > > > certainly seems like it isn't very active. Anyway, i would
> > > > > like to set up my laptop (new inspiron 6000) to duel boot
> > > > > SUSE linux and winXP. As i have never done this before, i
> > > > > was wondering if anybody who had done something similair
> > > > > would be willing to help me out (possibly in person) and
> > > > > show me how to do it. I would like to be able to do it
> > > > > without reformatting completely, i.e. resize the windows
> > > > > partition. i know it's possible but have no experience
> > > > > here and wouldn't want to screw up my only computer.
> > > > > Thanks everybody.
> > > > >
> > > > > -patrick
> > > > > _______________________________________________
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> > > > > Sluglug at sluglug.ucsc.edu
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> > > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > --
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