Y
Yesyesloud
Guest
Hello there... I finally decided to install a new, say, permanent distro on my laptop and I'm going for Arch, since it's a 'power user' lightweight OS still featuring practical ways to install thousands of applications (I am always testing new software, it's better to have dependency complaints automatically solved). Two questions emerged, however.
1st: There's only one HDD on this laptop, containing a single EXT4 partition (having 6GB RAM, I'm no SWAP fan; I even reclaimed almost all system reserved blocks to free space), and I want to install ARCH alongside my present GNU/Linux install. As I intend to create a new partition, it must be done under rescue mode or with a live cd, the only ways I am allowed to unmount and resize the current one. I want to make a 50GB segment - there's about 400GB of free space. Still, I am warned I can lose data if I do it. I decided to defragment my disk just to make sure I won't lose anything while splitting those free gigabytes... But, hey, there's a lot of free space at the end of the drive and Linux tend not to fragment data, specially when it's running on a smart EXT4 file system. So... Is defragmentation really necessary before partitioning, in this particular case?
2nd: I've been running e4defrag for an hour on this 500GB, 7200 RPM, 16MB Cache, SATA hard drive (single ext4 partition, as mentioned). Only ~100GB in use, 0,5-1GB files mostly. Any ideas on how long may the defrag process take? Windows' could take days.
I know I should back up everything and just do it the easy way, but I have no spare storage with enough free space.
Thanks in advance for any ideas.
1st: There's only one HDD on this laptop, containing a single EXT4 partition (having 6GB RAM, I'm no SWAP fan; I even reclaimed almost all system reserved blocks to free space), and I want to install ARCH alongside my present GNU/Linux install. As I intend to create a new partition, it must be done under rescue mode or with a live cd, the only ways I am allowed to unmount and resize the current one. I want to make a 50GB segment - there's about 400GB of free space. Still, I am warned I can lose data if I do it. I decided to defragment my disk just to make sure I won't lose anything while splitting those free gigabytes... But, hey, there's a lot of free space at the end of the drive and Linux tend not to fragment data, specially when it's running on a smart EXT4 file system. So... Is defragmentation really necessary before partitioning, in this particular case?
2nd: I've been running e4defrag for an hour on this 500GB, 7200 RPM, 16MB Cache, SATA hard drive (single ext4 partition, as mentioned). Only ~100GB in use, 0,5-1GB files mostly. Any ideas on how long may the defrag process take? Windows' could take days.
I know I should back up everything and just do it the easy way, but I have no spare storage with enough free space.
Thanks in advance for any ideas.