Disadvatages of using disk without partitioning?

rajnishmishra · 07-10-2008, 01:11 AM

i have added new disk to system and doesn't created any partition on that, created filesystem and using it.
Is there any side effects on performance of using disk in this way besides managebility(putting quota if using for home and other stuff).

thanks,
rajnish

pixellany · 07-10-2008, 06:27 AM

I only learned this was possible very recently--but have never tried it. It seems the only disadvantage would be simply losing the flexibility of multiple partitions.

I don't know why there would be any performance difference---why not try it?

indeliblestamp · 07-10-2008, 07:23 AM

I've heard that the performance improvements would come if you partition frequently used partitions (like swap and /var/log) in the inner slices of the disk, followed by less used partitions in the outer slices. The seek time will be faster or something.
But really, I'm not sure if its going to be noticeable for desktop users. A quick search might help..

Agrouf · 07-10-2008, 07:32 AM

fsck will take longer on the whole disk...

rajnishmishra · 07-12-2008, 11:30 PM

thanks people.
so there seems to be no major side effect of using disk as such besides loosing flexibility of partitions.

blackhole54 · 07-13-2008, 09:44 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by arungoodboy

I've heard that the performance improvements would come if you partition frequently used partitions (like swap and /var/log) in the inner slices of the disk, followed by less used partitions in the outer slices. The seek time will be faster or something.
But really, I'm not sure if its going to be noticeable for desktop users. A quick search might help..

I'm not up-to-date on this topic but I know I've read that the recommendations along this line have changed as disk drives have changed. So before anybody bases partitioning on this kind of consideration, it would be a really good idea to do a search for current information. (Unless, of course, you are using an old disk!

)

jlliagre · 07-14-2008, 01:37 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by rajnishmishra

i have added new disk to system and doesn't created any partition on that, created filesystem and using it.

Can you provide more details ? Are you directly laying out the filesystem on /dev/sdx ?

Quote:

Is there any side effects on performance of using disk in this way besides managebility(putting quota if using for home and other stuff).

The gain in available space would be quite slight compared to a single partition of the largest size. I do not expect any difference in performance. Your disk won't be bootable and might confuse other OSes when plugged in.

jailbait · 07-14-2008, 04:43 PM

If you are using swap in a Unix style operating system swap will run much faster as a separate partition than as a file.

------------------
Steve Stites