LUKS partition?

[Perry Thompson <rypervenche@yahoo.fr>]

Hi there. This may or may not be the best place to ask this, but I can't
seem to find help anywhere else, so I thought I would ask.

I have begun backing up my /home to a LUKS encrypted external hard drive
using rsync. I just got a second one external hard drive to do the same
thing with, however I have come across something that I am not sure how
to do.

When creating my LUKS partition, two guides I followed told me to
directly mkfs to the /dev/mapper/LUKS, whereas another told me to create
a partition on it. I did not create a partition on it.

What are the pros and cons to creating a partition on the decrypted
drive? I would like to know which to do before proceeding with backing
up my /home.

Thank you very much.