Defragger vs e4defrag

Defragger is a graphical Linux tool for examining and defragmenting filesystems, with a map showing file, free-space, and metadata allocation. Its analysis identifies fragmentation and displays filesystem blocks in an adaptive map. The project supports online defragmentation of ext4 and offline defragmentation and compaction of FAT16 and FAT32. FAT12 and exFAT can be analyzed, but not modified. A command-line interface can list, analyze, defragment, and compact volumes. The interface and command-line program run without elevated privileges; operations that need them use a PolicyKit-authorized helper over D-Bus. The stated environment is Linux with Qt 6 and KDE Kirigami; privileged mode also requires systemd, PolicyKit, and an active graphical PolicyKit agent. For ext4, Defragger uses Linux filesystem ioctls directly rather than calling e4defrag or filefrag. The project labels the software alpha, recommends backing up important data, and says ext4 has received the most testing. FAT write support is newer, so it recommends beginning with disposable or fully backed-up volumes. The software is dual-licensed under MIT or Apache License 2.0.

e4defrag is a Linux utility for defragmenting extent-based files on ext4 filesystems. It accepts an individual file, a directory and its files, or a device mounted as ext4. The utility aims to place targeted data in more contiguous blocks, which the manual says can improve file access speed. Its -c option reports current and ideal fragmentation counts and a fragmentation score without making changes; the score appears only when the check runs as root. With -v, it prints error messages and each file’s fragmentation count before and after defragmentation. e4defrag checks for ext4 and reports an error for other filesystem types. It does not support swap files, files in lost+found, or files allocated in indirect blocks. A target device or mount point excludes files belonging to another device’s mount point, and fragmented or insufficient free space can prevent improvement. The manual says it is safe to run while another application uses a file, though shared memory and disk bandwidth can slow both. It is free at free.