 |
|
| Linux Forum Index » Linux Hardware » how to use a 1TB disk?... |
|
Page 1 of 1 |
|
| Author |
Message |
| =SERGE=... |
 Posted: Tue Oct 13, 2009 12:28 pm |
|
|
|
Guest
|
Hello,
How should I use a 1 TB hd? The disk is intended to store music files and
videos.
Can just make 1 huge 1TB partition or maybe it's better to split the disk in
two partions?
Or there is no difference at all?
Thank you |
|
|
| Back to top |
|
|
|
| Jon Solberg... |
| Posted: Tue Oct 13, 2009 12:28 pm |
|
|
|
Guest
|
On 2009-10-13, ray <ray at (no spam) zianet.com> wrote:
Quote: On Tue, 13 Oct 2009 22:28:40 +0400, =SERGE= wrote:
How should I use a 1 TB hd? The disk is intended to store music files and
videos.
Can just make 1 huge 1TB partition or maybe it's better to split the disk in
two partions?
Or there is no difference at all?
Main difference I can think of is: how to plan to back things up - or do
you? It's going to be a pain to backup 1tb.
No, you just get two additional drives and keep them in separate
psychical locations. :-)
--
Jon Solberg (remove "nospam" from email address). |
|
|
| Back to top |
|
|
|
| ray... |
| Posted: Tue Oct 13, 2009 12:40 pm |
|
|
|
Guest
|
On Tue, 13 Oct 2009 22:28:40 +0400, =SERGE= wrote:
Quote: Hello,
How should I use a 1 TB hd? The disk is intended to store music files and
videos.
Can just make 1 huge 1TB partition or maybe it's better to split the disk in
two partions?
Or there is no difference at all?
Thank you
Main difference I can think of is: how to plan to back things up - or do
you? It's going to be a pain to backup 1tb. |
|
|
| Back to top |
|
|
|
| Chris Cox... |
| Posted: Tue Oct 13, 2009 1:05 pm |
|
|
|
Guest
|
On Tue, 2009-10-13 at 18:40 +0000, ray wrote:
Quote: On Tue, 13 Oct 2009 22:28:40 +0400, =SERGE= wrote:
Hello,
How should I use a 1 TB hd? The disk is intended to store music files and
videos.
Can just make 1 huge 1TB partition or maybe it's better to split the disk in
two partions?
Or there is no difference at all?
Thank you
Main difference I can think of is: how to plan to back things up - or do
you? It's going to be a pain to backup 1tb.
Other filesystem operations like "fsck" will take much longer when the
filesystem is huge.
With that said, I'd put the whole thing under LVM control and carve out
volumes from there and grow them as needed dynamically (in other words,
don't use the whole space initially, you might find you need a filesytem
for this or that...) |
|
|
| Back to top |
|
|
|
| Wolfgang Draxinger... |
| Posted: Tue Oct 13, 2009 4:54 pm |
|
|
|
Guest
|
=SERGE= wrote:
Quote: Can just make 1 huge 1TB partition or maybe it's better to split the disk
in two partions?
Splitting the storage in partitions limits the size a single file can grow.
If you want to use the disk in only a single pattern, make it one large
partition and use a file system that can cope with large files and doesn't
too long for a fsck. Personally I recommend JFS.
Actually: You don't need a partition at all, you can format something
like /dev/sda with a filesystem and mount that. Of course this will only
work with OS, that can access the storage on that level - like Linux.
Quote: Or there is no difference at all?
Only in the size a single file can grow to.
Wolfgang |
|
|
| Back to top |
|
|
|
| Aragorn... |
| Posted: Tue Oct 13, 2009 8:07 pm |
|
|
|
Guest
|
On Tuesday 13 October 2009 21:32 in comp.os.linux.hardware, somebody
identifying as Jon Solberg wrote...
Quote: On 2009-10-13, ray <ray at (no spam) zianet.com> wrote:
On Tue, 13 Oct 2009 22:28:40 +0400, =SERGE= wrote:
How should I use a 1 TB hd? The disk is intended to store music
files and videos.
Can just make 1 huge 1TB partition or maybe it's better to split the
disk in two partions?
Or there is no difference at all?
Main difference I can think of is: how to plan to back things up - or
do you? It's going to be a pain to backup 1tb.
No, you just get two additional drives and keep them in separate
psychical locations. 
I would recommend *physical* locations instead. Psychic locations might
prove interesting but may be a little harder to implement. :pp
(Just kidding, of course - I know that it was a typo and that English is
not your main language.  )
--
*Aragorn*
(registered GNU/Linux user #223157) |
|
|
| Back to top |
|
|
|
| Jon Solberg... |
| Posted: Tue Oct 13, 2009 8:57 pm |
|
|
|
Guest
|
On 2009-10-14, Aragorn <aragorn at (no spam) chatfactory.invalid> wrote:
Quote: On Tuesday 13 October 2009 21:32 in comp.os.linux.hardware, somebody
identifying as Jon Solberg wrote...
On 2009-10-13, ray <ray at (no spam) zianet.com> wrote:
On Tue, 13 Oct 2009 22:28:40 +0400, =SERGE= wrote:
How should I use a 1 TB hd? The disk is intended to store music
files and videos.
Can just make 1 huge 1TB partition or maybe it's better to split the
disk in two partions?
Or there is no difference at all?
Main difference I can think of is: how to plan to back things up - or
do you? It's going to be a pain to backup 1tb.
No, you just get two additional drives and keep them in separate
psychical locations. :-)
I would recommend *physical* locations instead. Psychic locations might
prove interesting but may be a little harder to implement. :pp
(Just kidding, of course - I know that it was a typo and that English is
not your main language. )
Oops. I blame it all to ispell. ;-)
--
Jon Solberg (remove "nospam." from email address). |
|
|
| Back to top |
|
|
|
| David Brown... |
| Posted: Wed Oct 14, 2009 1:00 am |
|
|
|
Guest
|
Chris Cox wrote:
Quote: On Tue, 2009-10-13 at 18:40 +0000, ray wrote:
On Tue, 13 Oct 2009 22:28:40 +0400, =SERGE= wrote:
Hello,
How should I use a 1 TB hd? The disk is intended to store music files and
videos.
Can just make 1 huge 1TB partition or maybe it's better to split the disk in
two partions?
Or there is no difference at all?
Thank you
Main difference I can think of is: how to plan to back things up - or do
you? It's going to be a pain to backup 1tb.
Other filesystem operations like "fsck" will take much longer when the
filesystem is huge.
That varies somewhat with the filesystem. ext4 will not take long to
fsck until there are a lot of files on the disk (and even then it will
be faster than ext3). For some filesystems, such as XFS (IIRC), the
fsck uses more memory for larger partitions - it is possible to build a
filesystem that your machine can't fsck at all due to memory
constraints. So check the details before committing to a filesystem
(especially as XFS has a reputation for being good for servers with
large files).
Quote: With that said, I'd put the whole thing under LVM control and carve out
volumes from there and grow them as needed dynamically (in other words,
don't use the whole space initially, you might find you need a filesytem
for this or that...)
I'd agree fully with that - LVM makes life much easier even if you only
have a single working partition to start with.
It can also side-step the fsck issue - you take a snapshot of the real
filesystem partition, and run an fsck on the snapshot. If the snapshot
fsck shows errors, you umount and repair the main partition - otherwise,
use tune2fs to set the "mount-count" to 0 so that the main partition
will not be checked automatically for a while yet. And since this
checking runs in the background while the main partition is in full use,
it doesn't matter if it takes a while. |
|
|
| Back to top |
|
|
|
| Andrew Gideon... |
| Posted: Wed Oct 14, 2009 7:21 am |
|
|
|
Guest
|
On Wed, 14 Oct 2009 09:00:13 +0200, David Brown wrote:
Quote: It can also side-step the fsck issue - you take a snapshot of the real
filesystem partition, and run an fsck on the snapshot. If the snapshot
fsck shows errors, you umount and repair the main partition - otherwise,
use tune2fs to set the "mount-count" to 0 so that the main partition
will not be checked automatically for a while yet.
Is this reliable? I'd think that it would tend to cause "false
positives" (that is, you'll see fsck failures on the snapshot that aren't
really a problem).
The reason I'd envision this is that an LVM snapshot operation is block
level. If you take a snapshot when the file system is active, the file
system may not be in a stable/quiescent state, resulting in complaints
from fsck.
I expect that, if you unmounted the volume before the snapshot, you'd
resolve this problem. Is that a necessary step? Is there some other way
to force a filesystem into a quiescent state during a block-level
snapshot by LVM? Or is there something about this that I'm missing?
- Andrew |
|
|
| Back to top |
|
|
|
| Trevor Hemsley... |
| Posted: Wed Oct 14, 2009 11:14 am |
|
|
|
Guest
|
On Wed, 14 Oct 2009 13:21:15 UTC in comp.os.linux.hardware, Andrew Gideon
<c182driver1 at (no spam) gideon.org> wrote:
No.
--
Trevor Hemsley, Brighton, UK
Trevor dot Hemsley at ntlworld dot com |
|
|
| Back to top |
|
|
|
| David Brown... |
| Posted: Thu Oct 15, 2009 2:33 am |
|
|
|
Guest
|
Andrew Gideon wrote:
Quote: On Wed, 14 Oct 2009 09:00:13 +0200, David Brown wrote:
It can also side-step the fsck issue - you take a snapshot of the real
filesystem partition, and run an fsck on the snapshot. If the snapshot
fsck shows errors, you umount and repair the main partition - otherwise,
use tune2fs to set the "mount-count" to 0 so that the main partition
will not be checked automatically for a while yet.
Is this reliable? I'd think that it would tend to cause "false
positives" (that is, you'll see fsck failures on the snapshot that aren't
really a problem).
It's not 100% reliable - as you say, you could get false positives
(i.e., a failed fsck while the "real" partition is actually fine).
Taking an LVM snapshot is much like doing an unexpected power cycle, so
it is quite possible to take the snapshot with the filesystem labelled
"dirty".
However, with a journalled filesystem, unexpected power cycles rarely
lead to corruption of the filesystem - and even then, it is often due to
hard disk write buffering (an issue you don't have with LVM snapshots).
So you may get a message telling you that the journal is being replayed
due to an unclean shutdown, but the fsck will probably be fine. And the
chances of that happening can be greatly reduced by doing a "sync"
before the snapshot. The standard practice of using "noatime" or
"relatime" on the main partition also helps avoid extra writes, and
therefore reduces the chance of the snapshot being unclean.
I can't think of any reason why you might get a false negative - that
the snapshot fsck is fine even though there is a problem on the real
partition.
Quote: The reason I'd envision this is that an LVM snapshot operation is block
level. If you take a snapshot when the file system is active, the file
system may not be in a stable/quiescent state, resulting in complaints
from fsck.
I expect that, if you unmounted the volume before the snapshot, you'd
resolve this problem. Is that a necessary step? Is there some other way
to force a filesystem into a quiescent state during a block-level
snapshot by LVM? Or is there something about this that I'm missing?
If absolute precision of the fsck is important, then you need to umount
the volume before the snapshot. You then have some "downtime" on the
partition, but it is a matter of seconds for the umount, snapshot, and
remount - the actual time-consuming fsck is still done on the snapshot
while the main partition is back in use.
What you are missing here is just the issue of probabilities. Yes,
there is a small chance of a false positive on the snapshot fsck even if
you've used "sync" before the snapshot. But you have to weigh that
against the alternative - time-consuming downtime for a real fsck on a
system that is probably fine in the first place.
Also, if you are unlucky enough to have a seriously corrupt filesystem,
running an fsck on a snapshot gives you the chance to test out
potentially dangerous fixes before running it on the main partition.
> - Andrew |
|
|
| Back to top |
|
|
|
| Hans-Joachim Zierke... |
| Posted: Sat Oct 17, 2009 2:23 pm |
|
|
|
Guest
|
DenverD schrieb:
Quote: isn't that kinda like asking: i responded to one of those net
advertisements selling methods of increasing one's "manhood", and now
i wanna know how i should use the monster?
:-)
But why's a 1TB a "monster"? These days, 1.5 TBs are the cheapest disks.
And fill up easily with just your favourite films copied from TV now
and then.
Hans-Joachim
--
It sometimes seems to me that people have a need for the externalization
of evil. They have the need to think that there is, somewhere, an enemy
boundlessly evil, because this makes them feel boundlessly good.
George Kennan |
|
|
| Back to top |
|
|
|
|
|
All times are GMT - 5 Hours
The time now is Thu Nov 26, 2009 1:28 pm
|
|