What to do with partitions?

colbert · 2008-02-06 17:37:53

Hey folks, I have 2 x 320gb on my box and I have them partitioned as such:

sda (all ext3 but XP, which is NTFS of course):
sda1 - XP (60gb)
sda2 - / (10gb)
sda3 - /home (20gb)
sda4 - swap (4gb)

sdb (all ext3):
sdb1 - 25gb
sdb3 - 100gb
sdb5 - 50gb
sdb6 - 50gb
sdb7 - 20gb
sdb8 - 60gb

I separated all that on sdb in that way for personal preference as each one has specific usage, but I don't really need to do it this way.

Now, I have noticed a little bit of sluggishness here and there reading from drives that annoyingly slows down my box. My questions are:

1. Is this way I have my drives partitioned causing the sluggishness? Or is it some type of scan or something I need to do that would "fix" it? I have been reading a bit about indexing but am unclear what it will do, or if I need to do it.
2. Is it more efficient to have fewer larger partitions? I have no problem wiping sdb (all backed up) and redoing it to 2 160gb parts or something.

Thanks very much for any help folks

Misfit138 · 2008-02-06 18:49:29

A couple things off the top of my head:
'noatime' and 'nodiratime' can be appended to your ext3 partitions for added performance.

Maybe post your fstab if you're unsure where to add this.

Running 'pacman -Syu' followed by 'pacman-optimize' as root will defrag your cache, enhancing pacman speed a wee bit.

dyscoria · 2008-02-06 19:01:49

'nologbufs=8' can be added to xfs partitions aswell (if you have any) as the 'noatime' and 'nodiratime' options.

colbert · 2008-02-06 19:12:55

Thank you for the suggestions, and I don't know where to put them as you guessed so here's my fstab

# 
# /etc/fstab: static file system information
#
# <file system>        <dir>         <type>    <options>          <dump> <pass>
none                   /dev/pts      devpts    defaults            0      0
none                   /dev/shm      tmpfs     defaults            0      0


#/dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom   iso9660   ro,user,noauto,unhide   0      0
#/dev/cdrom1 /mnt/cdrom1   iso9660   ro,user,noauto,unhide   0      0
#/dev/dvd /mnt/dvd   udf   ro,user,noauto,unhide   0      0
/dev/sda1 /media/xp ntfs-3g users,locale=en_US.utf8 0 1
/dev/sda2 / ext3 defaults 0 1
/dev/sda3 /home ext3 defaults 0 1
/dev/sda5 swap swap defaults 0 0
/dev/sda6 /media/video ext3 defaults 0 1
/dev/sdb1 /media/extra ext3 defaults 0 1
/dev/sdb3 /media/newpics ext3 defaults 0 1
/dev/sdb5 /media/mp3 ext3 defaults 0 1
/dev/sdb6 /media/personal ext3 defaults 0 1
/dev/sdb7 /media/guitar ext3 defaults 0 1
/dev/sdb8 /media/other ext3 defaults 0 1

#//192.168.44.100/origin /home/username/destination cifs username=netuser,password=hiddenword,_netdev,uid=a_user_name,gid=users 0 0

//192.168.1.105/jaycdrive /media/jaypcbobby cifs username=user,password=jimmypage 0 0
//192.168.1.105/new /media/jaypcnew cifs username=user,password=jimmypage 0 0

dyscoria · 2008-02-06 19:17:42

for each of the ext3 partitions, you can add the options to each line just after 'defaults' without spaces, like so:

/dev/sda2 / ext3 defaults,noatime,nodiratime 0 1
/dev/sda3 /home ext3 defaults,noatime,nodiratime 0 1

Do that for all of your ext3 partitions.

colbert · 2008-02-06 19:25:29

Okay I have changed it:

# 
# /etc/fstab: static file system information
#
# <file system>        <dir>         <type>    <options>          <dump> <pass>
none                   /dev/pts      devpts    defaults            0      0
none                   /dev/shm      tmpfs     defaults            0      0


#/dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom   iso9660   ro,user,noauto,unhide   0      0
#/dev/cdrom1 /mnt/cdrom1   iso9660   ro,user,noauto,unhide   0      0
#/dev/dvd /mnt/dvd   udf   ro,user,noauto,unhide   0      0
/dev/sda1 /media/xp ntfs-3g users,locale=en_US.utf8 0 1
/dev/sda2 / ext3 defaults 0 1
/dev/sda3 /home ext3 defaults,noatime,nodiratime 0 1
/dev/sda5 swap swap defaults,noatime,nodiratime 0 0
/dev/sda6 /media/video ext3 defaults,noatime,nodiratime 0 1
/dev/sdb1 /media/extra ext3 defaults,noatime,nodiratime 0 1
/dev/sdb3 /media/newpics ext3 defaults,noatime,nodiratime 0 1
/dev/sdb5 /media/mp3 ext3 defaults,noatime,nodiratime 0 1
/dev/sdb6 /media/personal ext3 defaults,noatime,nodiratime 0 1
/dev/sdb7 /media/guitar ext3 defaults,noatime,nodiratime 0 1
/dev/sdb8 /media/other ext3 defaults,noatime,nodiratime 0 1

#//192.168.44.100/origin /home/username/destination cifs username=netuser,password=hiddenword,_netdev,uid=a_user_name,gid=users 0 0

//192.168.1.105/jaycdrive /media/jaypcbobby cifs username=user,password=jimmypage 0 0
//192.168.1.105/new /media/jaypcnew cifs username=user,password=jimmypage 0 0

When does this "take effect" ? What must I do, or only on reboot?

dyscoria · 2008-02-06 19:28:11

You should add the options to your '/dev/sda2' partition too.

And yes a reboot will do it

colbert · 2008-02-06 19:28:16

And also my other question: Does it make more sense for speed to get rid of the many partitions idea and just keep one or two big ones on each drive ?? I just want the fastest disk access possible.

alex_anthony · 2008-02-06 19:29:02

what does this actually do? I just interested in finding out about my system

dyscoria · 2008-02-06 19:33:52

It seems that you have separate partitions for different types or groups of files (such as 'video' and 'mp3'). In all honesty I don't think splitting the partitions would increase the speed, although I don't have enough knowledge to really have an opinion either way. It would be much easier to maintain just the one partition.

You could say use your first harddrive (sda) for your root, home and swap partitions, and then your second harddrive (sdb) to store everything else in one single partition. If you used your current partitioning scheme and ran out of space in say your 'mp3' partition, it wouldn't be a problem if you had only one partition.

colbert · 2008-02-06 19:39:05

Yeah that makes sense, and I've had that happen a bunch of times lol

I think I'll keep 2 partitions, just splitting the drive up into 160x2.

dyscoria · 2008-02-06 19:40:07

alex_anthony wrote:

what does this actually do? I just interested in finding out about my system

"Linux records information about when files were created and last modified as well as when it was last accessed."

'noatime' stops this from occurring, providing possible speed benefits. I think 'nodiratime' has the same function for directories.

Last edited by Jamie (2008-02-06 19:40:46)

colbert · 2008-02-06 19:42:44

Thanks a lot Jamie, I'm going to bust out cfdisk and redo the partitions now.

farkus888 · 2008-02-06 19:50:22

if you are trying to read from or write to more than one of those partitions at the same time it can increase disk thrashing which will slow your access times compared to if you were too run one large partition with separate folders on it. the pysical layout of your data on the drive will probably be much more efficient with one big partition and letting ext3 decide where to put things so your drive heads will flop around less trying to get to things. I also second the idea that space management is less of an issue with one big partition, if the data on one of them were to outgrow its current partition it makes a lot more work to make more room for it.

for an apposing argument... if one or more of those partitions is say accepting ftp uploads you may want to keep it on a separate partition so that no one can fill your entire drive while you aren't looking, but the same thing can be accomplished with software based quotas. there are reasons similar to the ftp example above for the /, /boot, /swap, and /home partition scheme before you start thinking all you need is a / and swap partition on your OS drive.

colbert · 2008-02-06 20:01:38

Thank you farkus888, that kind of solidifies it for me. I was thinking about that aspect of the drive seeking the separate partitions constantly, as I use each partition all the time.

jacko · 2008-02-06 20:54:27

you will actually run out of more room quicker using more partitions. What happens if u copy one of those partitions till it's maxed out. What happen if that is with video files that are over 1 gig in size sometimes? Well if u only have say 923 mb's left on that partition and u need 1.4gb of space then u are screwed and losing out on valuable storage. I'd leave the second drive as one huge partition and as other have said, use good directory structure.

U don't need 4 gig for a swap drive, 1gig is plenty. Give the other 3 back to /home.

There is also a feature on by default that saves 5% of your HD space for an emergency. In these days on a 160gig HD 8gigs is a lot of storage for one emergency incident that doesn't happen very often. I would recommend setting this to 1% to get maximum space out of your HD's. check the wiki. ext3

jacko · 2008-02-06 20:57:20

http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Ext3_Filesystem_Tip

Arch Linux

#1 2008-02-06 17:37:53

What to do with partitions?

#2 2008-02-06 18:49:29

Re: What to do with partitions?

#3 2008-02-06 19:01:49

Re: What to do with partitions?

#4 2008-02-06 19:12:55

Re: What to do with partitions?

#5 2008-02-06 19:17:42

Re: What to do with partitions?

#6 2008-02-06 19:25:29

Re: What to do with partitions?

#7 2008-02-06 19:28:11

Re: What to do with partitions?

#8 2008-02-06 19:28:16

Re: What to do with partitions?

#9 2008-02-06 19:29:02

Re: What to do with partitions?

#10 2008-02-06 19:33:52

Re: What to do with partitions?

#11 2008-02-06 19:39:05

Re: What to do with partitions?

#12 2008-02-06 19:40:07

Re: What to do with partitions?

#13 2008-02-06 19:42:44

Re: What to do with partitions?

#14 2008-02-06 19:50:22

Re: What to do with partitions?

#15 2008-02-06 20:01:38

Re: What to do with partitions?

#16 2008-02-06 20:54:27

Re: What to do with partitions?

#17 2008-02-06 20:57:20

Re: What to do with partitions?

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