Re: Reason to use a partition
On 7/3/2012 3:16 AM, Ramon Hofer wrote:
> On Tue, 03 Jul 2012 10:04:04 +0200, Claudius Hubig wrote:
>
>> Hello Ramon,
>>
>> Ramon Hofer <ramonhofer@bluewin.ch> wrote:
>>> /dev/sdi1 jfs 1.9T 1.9T 3.9G 100% /mnt/recordings /dev/sdk
>>> xfs 1.9T 1.9T 3.3G 100% /mnt/recordings_temp
>>>
>>> Is there a reason why one should use a partition spanning the whole
>>> disk instead of creating the filesystem directly on the disk?
>>
>> If you use a partition, it is possible to move the partition a little
>> bit (a few kilo-/megabytes is usually enough) to align it with the
>> blocks of the HDD.
>>
>> I don’t know if this is possible when using disks directly. In any case,
>> it will be impossible to boot from such a disk, since there’s no room
>> for the MBR (or, if there is room for the MBR, the filesystem will be
>> unaligned with the disk blocks).
>>
>> I therefore would always prefer to use a single-partition layout rather
>> than the raw disk.
>
> Thanks for the answer!
Except Claudius gave you the wrong answer for your situation. You got
impatient again Ramon.
> I have created a new partition and the filesystem on it.
As I replied on XFS, there's ZERO reason for putting one partition on a
dedicated mythTV recording drive. And since this is an Advanced Format
drive, you instantly misaligned XFS by creating that partition. None of
the Squeeze partitioning tools understand ADF drives and will all
therefore create a sector misaligned partition, causing serious
performance degradation due to RMW cycles within the drive.
The definition of the word "partition" means to divide a whole into
smaller pieces. If you do not intend to divide your disk into smaller
pieces, but will be formatting the entire disk with a single filesystem,
then there is no reason to create a partition table with 1 partition.
Delete the partition, and directly format the drive with XFS, and you'll
be sector aligned, and everything will work as you expect.
--
Stan
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