Background
The performance of a file system is dependent on many things; one of the crucial factors is just how that filesystem lays out files on the disk. In general, it is best to keep related items together. The Linux ext2 and ext3 filesystems, for instance, have tried to spread directories on the cylinders of the disk. Imagine setting up a system with users' home directories in /home: if all the first-level directories within /home (i.e. the home directories for numerous users) are placed next to each other, there may be no space left for the contents of those directories. User files thus end up being placed far from the directories that contain them, and performance suffers.
Spreading directories on the disc allows files in the same directory to remain more or less contiguous as their number and/or size grows, but there are some situations where this causes excessive spreading of the data on the disc's surface.
Read more about this topic: Orlov Block Allocator
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