Date: Mon, 8 Feb 2010 15:04:44 -0500 From: Jerry McAllister <jerrymc@msu.edu> To: bf1783@gmail.com Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Should root partition be first partition? Message-ID: <20100208200444.GA58228@gizmo.acns.msu.edu> In-Reply-To: <d873d5be1002081137p7c547a28u21203b9e6191e3d1@mail.gmail.com> References: <d873d5be1002081137p7c547a28u21203b9e6191e3d1@mail.gmail.com>
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On Mon, Feb 08, 2010 at 02:37:30PM -0500, b. f. wrote: > > You can even > >leave gaps between partitions if you want, but that is pretty crazy > >since it just wastes some of the available space. > > > >There have been quite a lot of recommendations on how to lay out a disk > >for best performance, based on the observation that disk access times > >vary depending on how far away the data is from the spindle, and the > >expected usage patterns for the partition. Like any such advice, it > >has tended to become less valid over time. Modern disks really don't > >have any physical meaning to the Cylinder/Head/Sector style addressing > >schemes[*] nowadays -- and you're pretty much bound to be using LBA > >style addressing anyhow. Also, machines nowadays have so much RAM that > >(a) swap is hardly ever used and (b) access to popular files is > >frequently answered out of VM caches rathe than needing disk IO. > > > Layout is still important, and leaving some blank space may not be so > crazy. Here I'm thinking not so much of ordering (although one would > probably be best served by the recommended default ordering), but of > alignment, size, raid/stripe/concat configuration, and file system > block and fragment size selection. Witness the (as much as tenfold) > performance difference from simple changes, highlighted in the recent > thread entitled 'File system blocks alignment' on freebsd-arch@ during > December 2009 - January 2010, beginning with: > > http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-arch/2009-December/009770.html > > If you're laying out a new disk, you may as well take a few minutes > and get the most out of it, even if you're not going to invest in a > lot of new hardware. The system nowdays does all that figuring for you and manages boundaries reasonably. ////jerry > > b. > _______________________________________________ > freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list > http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions > To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-questions-unsubscribe@freebsd.org"
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