On Fri, 2005-12-23 at 14:18 -0600, Mike McCarty wrote: > But writing to the files *during installation* might result in > fragmentation. Initial installation, no. Installations of applications after a system has been used for some time, perhaps. This is another area where the Unix idea of keeping applications and data (user data, variable data, temporary files, etc.) partitioned away from brings you big benefits. Temporary files, in their many guises, are a pain for fragmenting drives on the Windows world, because they're generally all on the same partition. Put them on their own, and they only affect each other. Which doesn't really matter, as they can be periodically removed, easily and without harm (none of them need keeping once they've been used). User data doesn't usually suffer too much from fragmentation unless the user handles very large data files (mail spools, they do audio or video editing, etc.). Who cares if a 20kB file takes two or four head seeks to read, just the once while being opened up? It's not noticeable. Variable data, such as log files, are another cause for it. Again, partitioning is a good solution, for a variety of reasons--not just fragmentation, but from drive filling up by run-away or hijacked processes. At the very least, I like separate partitions for all of them (/home, /tmp, /var) from the main partition/s. -- Don't send private replies to my address, the mailbox is ignored. I read messages from the public lists.
