ReactOS and fragmentation

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Murmur
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ReactOS and fragmentation

Post by Murmur »

I am wondering how ReactOS is going to deal with fragmentation in the future, is it going to follow windows design method or are you going to add a swap partition similar to unixies

http://www.astahost.com/info.php/Reduce ... t2693.html
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EmuandCo
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Re: ReactOS and fragmentation

Post by EmuandCo »

OK, now plz explain me what a Swap has to do with file system fragmentation.
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MazeMage
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Re: ReactOS and fragmentation

Post by MazeMage »

I believe both FAT and NTFS are prone to fragmentation. I believe most modern file systems (Ext, XFS, ReiserFS etc.) don't tend to have fragmentation issues. All ReactOS (or Windows for that matter) would need are drivers for a modern file system.
Z98
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Re: ReactOS and fragmentation

Post by Z98 »

Calling the ext family of FSes modern is being very, very generous. ext2 is only marginally better than FAT and makes all sorts of compromises for the sake of speed, ext3 is just ext2 with journaling support. Ext4 finally brings capabilities that NTFS has had since at least Windows 2000 if not the older NT series to the ext family. And for the life of me I do not understand why the ext developers bother with even trying to maintain the ability of older ext drivers to read the newer formats, considering to do so means you can't use any of the newer functionality and what you end up with is basically a gimped ext4 partition that's no better than having started with an ext2 partition.

A filesystem can be fragmentation resistant depending on its strategy for dealing with file creation and enlargement (with the potential consequence of having files scattered all over the harddrive), but all filesystems suffer from fragmentation to one degree or another. The hilarious part is due to the insistence of Linux devs that the ext family is fragmentation resistant, tools to do defragmentation of ext partitions are few and far in between. So if you do run into a fragmentation problem, it's more or less a tough luck situation. There is no such thing as a non-fragmenting filesystem, unless the FS has built in support for defragmentation on the fly. So no, getting drivers for "modern" filesystems is not an end all solution to fragmentation.
zed260
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Re: ReactOS and fragmentation

Post by zed260 »

strictly speaking from fragmentation standpoint i bet http://ultradefrag.sourceforge.net/ gets included someday


as for filesystem regardless of which you use you make tradeoffs for instance ext family while fragmentation resestent you have more files scattered in the slower end portion of drive


while ntfs does fragment files are closer to start of drive which has benafit because its quicker to read to and from
fred02
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Re: ReactOS and fragmentation

Post by fred02 »

zed260 wrote:strictly speaking from fragmentation standpoint i bet http://ultradefrag.sourceforge.net/ gets included someday
Since it, as all other WinNT family defragmentors, relies on Windows API to work, just including it will solve nothing. On the other hand once the API is implemented any tool will work, but a working filesystem subsystem is needed first. :?
zed260
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Re: ReactOS and fragmentation

Post by zed260 »

@fred02 hence why i said someday (i dont expect there to be any progress on the file system till it becomes an issue namely when os gets near to using the full 4 gigabyte limit of the fat32 file system then you will see it be top priorty)
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Re: ReactOS and fragmentation

Post by Z98 »

4GB limit?
sh4ring4n
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Re: ReactOS and fragmentation

Post by sh4ring4n »

zed260 wrote:@fred02 hence why i said someday (i dont expect there to be any progress on the file system till it becomes an issue namely when os gets near to using the full 4 gigabyte limit of the fat32 file system then you will see it be top priorty)
That's fat, fat32 supports up to 2TB.
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gabrielilardi
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Re: ReactOS and fragmentation

Post by gabrielilardi »

sh4ring4n wrote:That's fat, fat32 supports up to 2TB.
2TB for volumes, 4GB for files. See this table i.e.
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Re: ReactOS and fragmentation

Post by forart »

Well, according to my personal experience the best FS for NT (compatible) OSes *was* HPFS (the OS/2 Filesystem).

It would be great to have an open source implementation for it: it would be useful for Linux too (that actually has only the read support for it) and could be interesting to establish a collaboration with osFree project, IMHO.
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Z98
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Re: ReactOS and fragmentation

Post by Z98 »

HPFS is basically a more primitive version of NTFS so I don't see how it is better suited.
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Re: ReactOS and fragmentation

Post by zed260 »

well baring a new filesystem from microsoft i think we will need ntfs support soonor or later


(speaking of which windows 8 i hear may contain new filesystem i know they hired ppl to work on one)
PurpleGurl
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Re: ReactOS and fragmentation

Post by PurpleGurl »

Murmur wrote:I am wondering how ReactOS is going to deal with fragmentation in the future, is it going to follow windows design method or are you going to add a swap partition similar to unixies

http://www.astahost.com/info.php/Reduce ... t2693.html
Why not just do it the Windows way? If you want a swap partition, you can make one yourself. In fact, I always do that when I install Windows. I set aside a partition just for the swap file and tell Windows to read it there. That helped under Windows 98 when trying to defragment the system volume. The swap file was why 98's defrag never finished. I mean, when you lack memory, you have to write to a swap file, and under 98, if the disk was written to at all during a defrag, the integrity of the defragmentation session was called into question, forcing it to start over. So if you put the writes on another partition, then defrag and the swap file would not compete.

In addition, I also create a temp files partition. I used to put the temp files and the swap file on the same partition. Those are the files all most likely to fragment, and also the ones most likely to trash the hard drive should something go wrong. So if you must reformat the swap and temp files partition, you lose nothing of importance.
Last edited by PurpleGurl on Sat Apr 23, 2011 1:26 pm, edited 1 time in total.
PurpleGurl
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Re: ReactOS and fragmentation

Post by PurpleGurl »

EmuandCo wrote:OK, now plz explain me what a Swap has to do with file system fragmentation.
It depends on the type of swap file you have. If you have a permanent swap file and it is contiguous, then it has nothing at all to do with fragmentation. Just defragment that file one time and be done with it. Temporary and expandable swap files get fragmented since they regularly change in size. However, expandable with a fixed bottom size is a good compromise, since you have an average size but allow it to expand if extra memory is needed. That still fragments when it must expand, but the extra size is deleted back to whatever default size you defined. So if the main chunk is not fragmented, then any fragmentation disappears when the extra size of the file gets deleted.

More implicated in fragmentation are temp files. I have a partition just for them. So it is a common place to go to for deleting files, and most of the fragmentation is there in one partition. All you have to do is set the paths in Windows and in the registry, and you can put them anywhere you want.
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