Re: [gentoo-user] [OT] Is it still advisable to partition a big hard drive?

[gevisz]

2016-09-01 14:55 GMT+03:00 Rich Freeman <rich0@g.o>:
> On Thu, Sep 1, 2016 at 2:04 AM, gevisz <gevisz@×××××.com> wrote:
>>
>> Is it still advisable to partition a big hard drive
>> into smaller logical ones and why?
>>
>
> Assuming this is only used on Linux machines (you mentioned moving
> files around), here is what I would do:
>
> 1. Definitely create a partition table.  Yes, I know some like to
> stick filesystems on raw drives, but you're basically going to fight
> all the automation in existence if you do this.

I will do it with gparted and guess that it will create a partition table
for me anyway.

> 2. Set it up as an LVM partition.  Unless you're using filesystems
> like zfs/btrfs that have their own way of doing volume management,
> this just makes things less painful down the road.
>
> 3. I'd probably just set it up as one big logical volume, unless you
> know you don't need all the space and you think you might use it for
> something else later.  You can change your mind on this with ext4+lvm
> either way, but better to start out whichever way seems best.

I had to refresh my memory about LVM before replying to you
but still can not see why I may need LVM on an external
hard drive...

> It will take you all of 30 seconds to format this, unless you're
> running badblocks (which almost nobody does, because...

it takes too much time?

I currently running a smart test on it, and it promised to take
10 hours to complete...

> You seem to be concerned about losing data.  You should be.  This is a
> physical storage device.  You WILL lose everything stored on it at
> some point in time.

Last time, I have managed to restore all the data from my 2.5" hard
drive that suddenly died about 7 years ago and hope to do it again
if any. :)

>  You mitigate this by one or more of:
> 1.  Not storing anything you mind losing on the drive, and then not
> complaining when you lose it.
> 2.  Keeping backups, preferably at a different physical location,
> using a periodically tested recovery methodology.
> 3.  Availability solutions like RAID (not the same as a backup, but it
> will mean less downtime WHEN you WILL have a drive failure).  Some
> filesystems like zfs/btrfs have specific ways of achieving this (and
> are generally more resistant to unreliable storage devices, which all
> storage devices are).
>
> I've actually had LVM eat my data once due to some kind of really rare
> bug (found one discussion of similar issues on some forum somewhere).

Aha!

> That isn't a good reason not to use LVM.  Wanting to plug the drive
> into a bunch of Windows machines would be a good reason not to use
> LVM, or ext4 for that matter.
>
> Most of the historic reasons for not having large volumes had to do
> with addressing limits, whether it be drive geometry limits,
> filesystem limits, etc.  Modern partition tables like GPT and
> filesystems can handle volumes MUCH larger than 5TB.
>
> Most modern journaling filesystems should also tend to avoid failure
> modes like losing the entire filesystem during a power failure (when
> correctly used, heaven help you if you follow a random friend's advice
> with mount options, like not using at least ordered data or disabling
> barriers).  But, bugs can exist, which is a big reason to have backups
> and not just trust your filesystem unless you don't care much about
> the data.

Thank you for replying.