Disk partitioning and swap

[mikebw at bilow.bilow.uu.ids.net (Mike Bilow)]

Derek Atkins wrote in a message to Mike Bilow:

 DA> Really, the only advantage of having multiple, small
 DA> partitions is if you have multiple disks (spindles).  The
 DA> e2fsck program can work in parallel across multiple disks. 
 DA> But it can only split up after it finishes the root
 DA> paritition.  So, if you have, say, two 18G drives, it would
 DA> be faster to have a 'small' root on one drive and then more
 DA> partitions on both.

I strongly advise against allowing single filesystems to span disks.  Very
great inefficiency can result, especially if you do this with IDE.  There might
be unusual circumstances where it makes sense with SCSI, but even then I remain
quite skeptical.  The only case where I can see a basis for this is when there
is a need to store files which are themselves larger than the disk, and there
are a lot better solutions, such as RAID, in that case.

 DA> If you only have one drive, it really doesn't matter.  IMHO.

Generally, I agree.  However, there are BIOS limitations and other exceptions.
See my much more involved discussion in a prior message.
 
-- Mike


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