On ext2/3/4 filesystems, there are a couple handy tools for measuring fragmentation that you probably already have installed To see how fragmented a file is:

On ext2/3/4 filesystems, there are a couple handy tools for measuring fragmentation that you probably already have installed To see how fragmented a file is: filefrag -v filename To see how fragmented your free space is e2freefrag devicename http://linux.die.net/man/8/e2freefrag http://linux.die.net/man/8/e2freefrag http://linux.die.net/man/8/filefrag http://linux.die.net/man/8/filefrag To learn about the intricacies of how fragmentation can occur in ext3 and some better tools for measuring it, see the fragmentation section of Oliver Diedrich's article 'Tuning the Linux file system Ext3'. http://www.h-online.com/open/features/Fragmentation-746701.html http://www.h-online.com/open/features/Fragmentation-746701.h... Extents, multiblock allocation, and delayed allocation make ext4 more resistant to fragmentation than ext3, but the developers are still working on a defrag utility. http://kernelnewbies.org/Ext4 http://kernelnewbies.org/Ext4