#!/bin/bash #vfat file order #create 100 random numbered files of 4 digit length for i in `seq 1 100`;do touch $(($RANDOM%9000+1001));done #use find and you will find them to be in a non sequential order find #this is what we want find|sort #touch does not work because it's not a timestamp thing, it's the order the files are written to the device find|sort|while read i;do touch "$i";done #use fatsort #install fatsort sudo aptitude install fatsort #unmount the drive then run fatsort on the partition sudo fatsort /dev/sdX1