Re: [sheflug] HD partitioning question

["Wonkey Donkey" <wonkey_donkey [at] xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "John Cooper" <john [at] choffee.co.uk>
To: "sheflug" <sheflug [at] sheflug.co.uk>
Sent: Monday, July 31, 2006 5:46 PM
Subject: Re: [sheflug] HD partitioning question


>> Hi all,
>>
>
> Hi Steve,
>
>
>>
>> HDD1:
>>
>> sda1 : 32 Mb : /boot (Simply enough for a few custom kernels and the grub
>> stuff)
>> sda2 : 4096 Mb : swap (The machine has 2 Gb of memory)
>> sda3 : remaining space on sda for /
>>
>> HDD2:
>>
>> sdb1 : all available space in a single partition, mounted as /usr
>>
>
> Might I suggest that you keep /usr as part of / and move /var onto the
> second disk. /usr should not change that much but /var is more likley to
> fill.  Perhaps a seperate partition for /tmp can be nice. I don't think
> that you are likley to be filling things up in a hurry. I tend to keep
> things small and grow then when required. 2-3Gb for /, 2-3Gb for /var,
> 500Mb for /tmp. Then just grow them if you need more space. It allows me
> to add partitions and move things about if I need to. I use LVM to make it
> all pretty painless.
>
> But if you have 2x32Gb for the basic system then I would look at running
> Raid on the two disks. It saves a lot of time and pain, normally at just
> the wrong moment, in the long run! It will also give you a little bit of a
> speed boost if you run it as a straight mirror for some tasks.
>
>> HDD3:
>>
>> sdc1 : all available space in a single partition, mounted as /virtual 
>> (For
>> virtual machines created using VMware)
>>
>
> You may want to look into lvm and snapshots for this. Create a master
> partition with an installed copy of the OS, snapshot it and boot it up to
> test various things. Might save a bit of time and space. Although again
> 300Gb should give you room to play! Perhaps move the build directories
> from gento onto this disk depending on how fast/old your SCSI disks are.
>
>
>> HDD4:
>>
>> sdd1 : all available space in a single partition, mounted as /documents
>> (For
>> the large number of user documents that will eventually be present).
>>
>
> If you really need the space then that's cool but again I am a big fan of
> some RAID! If you could afford it, another disk and RAID 5 would give you
> the same space with a lot more protection. But I suppose if you have good
> backups and time to restore then it's not so much of a problem.
>
>
>
> john
>

John,

Are you referring to raid0 or raid1 there ? You mention a speed boost and a 
straight mirror in the same sentence...

If I was going to look at raid, I'd probably go down the raid0 route. To be 
honest though, I have seen just so many articles on software raid under 
linux, its difficult to know which one is right, or best for my purpose.

Also, I have a couple of external enclosures which I shall most likely be 
using for backups, so the target here is more performance. For their 
intended use, the 2 large drives perform adequately as single units.

I'd like to get best possible performance from the 2 raptors though. My 
initial thought was that performance would improve considerably by moving 
/usr across to the second drive.

Do you think software raid would be a better improvement over this ?

Steve. 



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