wrote
Vir Campestris wrote

The Windows guys chose to put all their files near the same end
of the disk to reduce seeks when the disk is nearly empty. Linux
has a different approach - they are scattered all over the place.

Longer seeks but less of them, due to less fragmentation.

But when very few very large files are accessed serially now
except with media files where the access speed is entirely
determined by the media play speed, it is very far from clear
that less fragmentation actually matters much anymore and
it is clear that any modern system does a hell of a lot more
accessing all sorts of files at quite a high rate, even if that
is only the internet cache files and cookies etc etc etc, it
makes a lot more sense to minimise the time that happens.

Total wait time is thus less.

Not necessarily.

I wonder how linux handles writing FAT32.