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I have owned my laptop now for about 8 months a feel its slightly slowing a bit and I think it is time for a Defrag. Should I be worried about windows 8 effecting the Ubuntu partion part of my harddrive? Also can I, Should I or is it even possible to defrag Ubuntu's side of the partition. Thank you in advance for the info.

Thanks

user245869
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Is Ubuntu installed on a different partition? if so, windows defrag shouldn't touch the other partition as it works at the filesystem level.

Defragmentation under Ubuntu is not needed (Why is defragmentation unnecessary?), but if you want to do it, you can google "defrag ubuntu" to get some ideas.

Community
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roadmr
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From the context of the question and the assumption that your experience level is low, this applies if you installed Ubuntu using the wubi (Windows-based installer) which installed to a single file in your Windows partition and is used as a disk image.

If this is the case, a Windows defrag will likely either move this file to a more efficient area of the disk (in tact and as a complete file) or it will move the other files around it - whichever will result in less fragmentation. So no, your Ubuntu install will not be affected.

Refer to @roadmr's answer for the second part - you do not need to defrag your Ubuntu partition

Furthermore, if your disk is an SSD, defragmentation is unnecessary regardless of operating system because it is done by the controller automagically.

Deryck
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No, this isn't something you need to worry about.

Your Ubuntu partition uses the EXT4 file system (or possibly EXT3, depending), which Windows cannot read. That is to say, it is in a part of the hard drive that Windows by itself cannot access (Windows only really has support for FAT and NTFS).

The defragmentation process isn't too well defined in Ubuntu. It's possible, but most deem it unnecessary, as there just isn't as much fragmentation in EXT filesystems as in NTFS. The way of doing it is to boot using a LiveCD and using GParted to shrink the partition to just above the amount of data present, and then grow it again (basically squashing the data to the start of the partition). But it's not really needed, so I wouldn't worry about it.

Jez W
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