Partitioning tool ?

[Vincent Trouilliez]

> Advice is to boot to XP, defrag, then boot to installer or rescue CD and
> resize.  The defrag is supposed to help it succeed... or perhaps that's
> a superstition.  You tell me and we'll both know.  I don't know how it
> works.
>  
> Karl Hegbloom 

Hi Karl,

Yes, I used to think this too. I very naively thought that
'defragmenting' meant putting each file back together in one piece, then
put all the files at the beginning of the partition, so that you could
safely shrink the partition for example, or just make things tidy
really.
However, my first hand experience lead me to the conclusion that... Win
XP defrag program is a.... bad joke !
I used it on one of my IDE hard drives, the one where I keep all my
precious static data. Basically it was a 8.4GB drive, with 2GB of free
space. After 2 hours of hard work, it left me with one big file, a 700MB
movie file, split in 7 bits, at the very end of the drive, with a vast
2GB empty space between the bits and the rest of the data at the
beginning of the drive/partition !!
Now how useful is that ? But also, WHY didn't it manage that last file ?

With 2GB of empty space, what's the difficulty in appending the 7 bits
of the video file, to the rest of the files at the beginning of the
partition ? I tried copying the file onto another hardrive, then
deleting the file from the original drive, then putting it back (still
with me ? ;o), thinking, that's a "new" file, as far as Windows is
concerned, so it should put it nex to the other data.
But in thinking so, I was assuiming that windows was vaguely, remotely
smart. Obviously, I should have guessed that this way too much to ask to
poor Windows !  Yes, you guessed it, stupid windows put the file,
exactly where it was before I deleted it ! It split it in 7 bits and put
it at the very end of the partition.
So now, when I hear of XP defrag program, I just laugh...or cry,
depending on the mood.
One of the first thing I did when I swtiched to Linux 6 months ago was
to ask about a defrag program for Linux. I got the same answer from al
the people I asked : there is no defrag tool for Linux, the file system
is so much better than Windows crap, that you don't even have to worry
about fragmentation.

So that was the very first example I got of how Linux is better than
Win(over)doze, and the more I use and learn about my Penguin, the more
example I discover. I have been using Linux full time for only 6 months
but it alreadyt feels, somehow, like Windows is such an old souvenir,
like, like I had been on Linux for 30 years and Windows was just an
extremely old souvenir.
Linux just feels  (and is !) "right". 

Sorry for rambling ;o)

Vince, feeling at home in Pengu-land.