Partition to enhance the performance of your hard drive
Most users up until now had only a single partition on their single rotating media disk in their personal computers. Common operating systems did not (and some still not) encourage their end users to organize their data into partitions in a different way. Naturally, this would be both an overkill and a mental overload for most users. However, an advanced user should not turn away from the possible benefits of restricted fragmentation and lowered seek times. Also consider the ease of backing up only the partitions that contain truly precious data.
A few words about fragmentation. Most random access file systems today use block-sizes of discreet steps (sometimes only a single block size). External fragmentation is the physical discontinuity of logically continuous stored entities (files). Internal fragmentation is the overhead of this block scheme. Naturally if a file is composed of many identically sized, relatively large buckets, then most files will have some buckets that are not completely filled with meaningful data. There exist file systems that collect these 'scraps' in a clever way, but that's beside the point.
What I propose is a scheme (there exist many) that tries to reduce external fragmentation for common use cases, and ought to work with almost all operating systems.
Here's my common wisdom about partitioning rotating media listed in ascending partition order.
The last one may need some explanation. If you are 'hoarding' data like many people I know (like collecting a gallery of operating systems that they will never boot), then writing down exactly how you have obtained the data that you keep in your archive (like URLs, make switches, etc.) is a good idea. If you always take note in-situ then it doesn't take much effort. And on the plus side, you can share your work on the methods easily, because it's only a matter of kilobytes. If you are of the creative kind, for example a programmer, then you should trivially store your work's sources, or at least in a compacted form if you are on the high side on data lust. Another great idea is to assemble a installer script here that can restore your system by giving detailed instructions on what exactly needs to get installed and when, and what configuration steps need to be commenced.
You ought to back this up daily to some removable storage, because it's small and worth it. The other partitions could wait until you have time on your hands, like weekly or monthly. Some say they won't even bother to back up any other data on their computer, because they say it isn't worth it, and they don't use those files much anyway.
Furthermore, it's also a good idea to increase the file system block size on huge partitions that usually hold spacious files.
If you have any comments on this scheme, please don't hesitate to drop me a few lines!
A few words about fragmentation. Most random access file systems today use block-sizes of discreet steps (sometimes only a single block size). External fragmentation is the physical discontinuity of logically continuous stored entities (files). Internal fragmentation is the overhead of this block scheme. Naturally if a file is composed of many identically sized, relatively large buckets, then most files will have some buckets that are not completely filled with meaningful data. There exist file systems that collect these 'scraps' in a clever way, but that's beside the point.
What I propose is a scheme (there exist many) that tries to reduce external fragmentation for common use cases, and ought to work with almost all operating systems.
Here's my common wisdom about partitioning rotating media listed in ascending partition order.
- Start with the boot partition if you would like to enjoy fast boot times. I wouldn't be surprised if a smart guy (or gal) organized their kernel accompanied by some binaries and their required libraries that are needed at bootup here. Note that this isn't strictly necessary as booting a machine is a rare use case.
- Next comes a small partition for the system that still ought to have enough space for future updates, system configuration and any core installer that must absolutely write to your system drive.
- Create your swap partition - if you can have more of these then put a smaller one here - right after the system's drive.
- A smaller partition for your most frequently used, but not too large applications that you would like to install.
- You can put another swap partition here if your system can handle this.
- A small temporary partition that you can set up for the system temp and download directory.
- A larger partition for all other installed stuff.
- A larger one for your own temporary stuff.
- A beefy one that you can keep your more permanent stuff on. This isn't strictly necessary.
- A really beefy one that you can archive on.
- Any number of further archiving partitions that suits your taste. It may help in backing up and to minimize possible damage in case of file system corruption (be it hardware or software), but some view it as being unjustified.
- And last, but not least, leave a small one for your really important stuff that you must absolutely keep safe. You may soft-mirror this on the same drive to some other location, as that may protect you from certain hard drive failures (creeping bad sectors). Though, a catastrophic failure is much more common, some protection is better than no protection!
The last one may need some explanation. If you are 'hoarding' data like many people I know (like collecting a gallery of operating systems that they will never boot), then writing down exactly how you have obtained the data that you keep in your archive (like URLs, make switches, etc.) is a good idea. If you always take note in-situ then it doesn't take much effort. And on the plus side, you can share your work on the methods easily, because it's only a matter of kilobytes. If you are of the creative kind, for example a programmer, then you should trivially store your work's sources, or at least in a compacted form if you are on the high side on data lust. Another great idea is to assemble a installer script here that can restore your system by giving detailed instructions on what exactly needs to get installed and when, and what configuration steps need to be commenced.
You ought to back this up daily to some removable storage, because it's small and worth it. The other partitions could wait until you have time on your hands, like weekly or monthly. Some say they won't even bother to back up any other data on their computer, because they say it isn't worth it, and they don't use those files much anyway.
Furthermore, it's also a good idea to increase the file system block size on huge partitions that usually hold spacious files.
If you have any comments on this scheme, please don't hesitate to drop me a few lines!
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