[plug] non-contiguous inodes in ext3 - a problem? avoidable?

[Daniel]

Hello All,
can anyone tell me please: are non-contiguous inodes something that just
happens with ext3?  I have recently repartitioned the drive into one
partition and formatted then copied contents of another disk, and done
two tar backups.  No deletion or renaming of files.

Why would I get non-contiguous inodes?  Is it avoidable/ fixable/ a
problem?
- - - - - - 
 fsck.ext3 -pcv /dev/hdb1

   23679 inodes used (1%)
     746 non-contiguous inodes (3.2%)
         # of inodes with ind/dind/tind blocks: 5735/105/0
 1994339 blocks used (24%)
       0 bad blocks
       1 large files

   22799 regular files
     871 directories
       0 character device files
       0 block device files
       0 fifos
       0 links
       0 symbolic links (0 fast symbolic links)
       0 sockets
--------
   23670 files
- - - - - -
Thanks,
Daniel.