UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

is there a command to degragment or clean the disk drives on an HP SCO Unix maching?

No defrag necessary.... however, we clean filesystems using commands like fsck .... a file system check and repair utility.......

There are several options to degrag a Unix box. Since you are running SCO Unix, there is a 3rd party product that you can purchase and install that will continually keep your files defragmened. Another quick solution is to simply backup your data to tape either using cpio or tar command and then restore from tape. I would caution you to be sure that your tape drive is in proper working order... OR... tar up your directories to disk (assuming you have enough free disk space) and then restore from that tar archive. fsck does not degrag a drive under SCO or any other Unix O/S that I am aware of.

In 15 years of UNIX work on countless systems I have never run across the need to "defrag" and UNIX filesystem. There is simply no reason to do it because UNIX filesystem are completely different than DOS/WINDOWS file systems.

FSCK does not defrag because it is not necessary to defragment UNIX filesystems!!

Almost exactly a year ago we covered this same topic and why defragmentation is largely unneccessary on Unix filesystems. Check out the link for a good article on the subject.

removed html tags for readability --oombera

Thanks PxT !!! Is HAS been over a year!!! Time files, even in forum-time UNIX.com space .....

Neo is right in the Unix handles files completely different than DOS and Windows, and I tend to agree with him in that Unix filesystems don't normally need to be "defragged" however, I have, from years approximately 17 years of Unix experience, noticed that file rebuilds, access times, and the such tend to be quicker if files are in one contiguous length - ESPECIALLY if you have data files that in which a seperate index file is mainained. I think what one has to do is try for himself to determine if any performance is gained by "degragging" their Unix filesystems. Often what I find, is that what I personally may consider a performance gain and what steps I must undertake into gaining that performance gain generally does not warrant the effort.