[Date Prev][Date Next] [Thread Prev][Thread Next] [Date Index] [Thread Index]

Re: cloning hard disk



On Thu, Feb 17, 2005 at 02:50:54PM -0700, Allasso Travesser wrote:
> On Monday 14 February 2005 11:54 am, you wrote:
> > BTW your partitioning scheme could do with a little modification -
> > it's customary to make the swap partition the first partition on the
> > disk, not the last, as access to the outer part of a disk is faster.
>
> My understanding has been that the first partition has to be the boot
> partition. Am I understanding you correctly, that you are saying that
> hdx1 would be the swap partition?

Yes, I've got several machines where [hs]dx1 is swap. Most of them
don't have a separate /boot, but / is on [hs]dx2. I also have a
machine with /boot on hda3.

The "boot partition has to be first" thing is pretty well irrelevant
these days. It used to be the case that a lot of BIOSes wouldn't
recognise any of a hard disk beyond cylinder 1024, so you made /boot
the first partition to keep it all below cylinder 1024. Any BIOS
dating from later than the days when half a gig was a big, big drive
won't have this problem.

The other place it crops up is with systems that dual-boot Linux and
Windoze. While it is possible to make Windoze run off other than the
first partition if you hit it with a big enough hammer, it tends to be
flaky and strange things happen. So with a dual-boot system you make
the Windoze boot partition the first one.

Having said that, /boot only needs to be say 50 MB, so if you do want
to put it first it's so small it won't make a noticeable difference to
swap speed.

-- 
Pigeon

Be kind to pigeons
Get my GPG key here: http://pgp.mit.edu:11371/pks/lookup?op=3Dget&search=0x21C61F7F

Attachment: signature.asc
Description: Digital signature


Reply to: