If you have a large section with XFS which, for some reason, was quite often filled up almost 100%, then the files on it can be quite fragmented. To check this and use online defragmentation, you need to install xfs_utils, xfsdump. For Debian / Ubuntu run sudo apt-get install xfs_utils xfsdump We look how much fragmented section sudo xfs_db -r /dev/sdb1 xfs_db> frag actual 278616, ideal 24966, fragmentation factor 91.04% So now, when we figured out that defragmenting a partition does not hurt - let's use the fact that xfs knows how to conduct online defragmentation of a partition. Run sudo xfs_fsr -v /dev/sdb1
/home/ftp start inode=0 ino=163 extents before:2 after:1 DONE ino=163 ino=169 extents before:2 after:1 DONE ino=169 ino=171 extents before:2 after:1 DONE ino=171 ino=1391 ...... After the first pass, the result xfs_db> frag actual 48121, ideal 24966, fragmentation factor 48.12% To perform several passes at once, you can run with the -p parameter or specify how long to work with -t