filesystem-defragmentation · shipping

Filesystem defragmentation

Reorganizing a file's storage extents to reduce fragmentation while preserving its logical contents.

Btrfs defragmentation can break extent sharing with reflink copies or snapshots, increasing data-space use. [1]

The recursive command in btrfs-progs v6.16 skips nested subvolumes, mount points and directory symlinks; its requested extent size is only a target. Rewriting also needs space reservations. [2]

Relations

related
file-extent, free-space-fragmentation, reflink, copy-on-write, transparent-compression

Citations

  1. Btrfs-progs v6.16: Defragmentation, extent sharing and compression (accessed 2026-10-16)
  2. Btrfs-progs v6.16: filesystem defragment, traversal, extent targets and reservations (accessed 2026-10-16)

Further reading

  1. Hesela: Fast file clones and deferred copying costs (accessed 2026-10-16)
Sources & caveats

JSON: /data/terms/filesystem-defragmentation.json