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gevisz wrote: |
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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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>> 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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|
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Something to think on. You have a 5TB drive. You format the whole |
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thing and let's say it takes 30 seconds. Or, you break it into two |
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2.5TB partitions and then format those, which take 20 or 25 seconds |
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each. That adds up to 40 to 50 seconds format time. Isn't it faster to |
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format one large partition instead of two? After all, you have to type |
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the command in to format it too which also takes a few seconds, assuming |
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you up arrow and just edit the partition letter. No matter whether you |
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break the drive up into parts or not, you are still formatting 5TBs |
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worth of drive. The only way you can save time is to not format the |
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whole thing. |
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|
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Things break. They always have and always will. Sure you can prepare |
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for that lose but if not careful, you could lose it while you are |
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second, third, forth etc etc etc guessing yourself and what tool you are |
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going to use. I suspect that every file system out there has caused a |
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person to lose data before. I'm sure that every brand and even model of |
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hard drive out there has caused someone to lose data before. When it |
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gets as complex has a hard drive and the tools used on them, it has to |
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break at some point. The best bet, duplicate your files just in case |
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something in the above list goes bad. The only advice I think would be |
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good on this, don't use the same brand and model drive for both main and |
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backup. One could even say not to use the same file system, that way if |
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one goes bad due to bad coding in the kernel, likely the other shouldn't |
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be affected, but even that can't be a for sure thing. |
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I hope you aren't to worried about making a backup now that you can |
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think on how everything fails eventually. ;-) |
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|
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Dale |
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|
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:-) :-) |
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