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2016-09-01 9:13 GMT+03:00 Alan McKinnon <alan.mckinnon@×××××.com>: |
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> On 01/09/2016 08:04, gevisz wrote: |
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>> I have bought an external 5TB Western Digital hard drive |
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>> that I am going to use mainly for backing up some files |
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>> in my home directory and carrying a very big files, for |
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>> example a virtual machine image file, from one computer |
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>> to another. This hard drive is preformatted with NTFS. |
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>> Now, I am going to format it with ext4 which probably |
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>> will take a lot of time taking into account that it is |
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>> going to be done via USB connection. So, before formatting |
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>> this hard drive I would like to know if it is still |
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>> advisable to partition big hard drives into smaller |
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>> logical ones. |
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> |
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> it will take about 5 seconds to partition it. |
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> And a few more to mkfs it. |
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Just to partition - may be, but I very much doubt |
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that it will take seconds to create a full-fledged |
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ext4 file system on these 5TB via USB2 connention. |
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|
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Even more: my aquiantance from the Window world |
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that recomended me this disc scared me that it may |
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take days... |
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|
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> Are you sure you aren't thinking of mkfs with ext2 |
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> (which did take hours for a drive that size? |
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> |
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>> |
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>> For about 20 last years, following an advice of my older |
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>> colleague, I always partitioned all my hard drives into |
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>> the smaller logical ones and do very well know all |
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>> disadvantages of doing so. :) |
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> |
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> So you are following 20 year-old advice for hardware relevant to 20 |
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> years ago and not taking tech advances into account ? :-) |
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Yes. But, please, take into account that after these 20 years |
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I decided to reconsider the old "rule of thumb." :) |
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>> But what are disadvantages of not partitioning a big |
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>> hard drive into smaller logical ones? |
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> |
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> You only get 1 mount point |
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> Some ancient software might whinge and complain about not having a |
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> partition table present. |
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> The drive vendor no longer has a place to put their magic sekrit |
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> phone-home data collection stuff. Oh wait, that's a benefit and belongs |
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> below |
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> |
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>> |
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>> Is it still advisable to partition a big hard drive |
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>> into smaller logical ones and why? |
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> |
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> The only reason to partition a drive is to get 2 or more |
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> smaller ones that differ somehow (size, inode ratio, mount options, etc) |
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> |
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> Go with no partition table by all means, but if you one day find you |
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> need one, you will have to copy all your data off, repartition, and copy |
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> your data back. If you are certain that will not happen (eg you will |
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> rather buy a second drive) then by all means dispense with partitions. |
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> |
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> They are after all nothing more than a Microsoft invention from the 80s |
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> so people could install UCSD Pascal next to MS-DOS |
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I definitely will not need more than one mount point for this hard drive |
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but I do remember some arguments that partitioning a large hard drive |
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into smaller logical ones gives me more safety in case a file system |
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suddenly will get corrupted because in this case I will loose my data |
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only on one of the logical partitions and not on the whole drive. |
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|
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Is this argument still valid nowadays? |
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