Bernhard Auzinger, mused, then expounded: > Hi, > > as I have four hdd's in my computer, I was wondering if it does make sense to > source out some partitions/directories to a second hdd. >
There is no simple answer. It really depends upon a lot of factors - controllers, drives, file system, memory, system bus... > At the moment I have separate partitions for /var, /tmp and /usr/portage (I > feel portage is a lot faster since I've done this) on the same hdd. > > My question is if it makes sence to move these partitions to another harddisk? > Spreading them across drives could result in faster access if the controllers the drives are atached to allow overlapping commands. IDE doesn't do this and can only have one drive active on the bus. Also, some things - /var/tmp/portage, need fast read/write access while /usr/portage is a large number of small files (things like Open Office, gcc, firefox being exceptions) and mainly read only access. In many cases /tmp is mainly an initial write, then mostly read only access once the file get built. Also, it depends on where on the drive the partition resides. Swap is usually best around one third to one half into the drive if the drive is 60% or more full. Less access time as the head idles arounf the swap area. And as drives fill up, they will slow down as file seek times increase. Additionally, different file systems will respond to the types of files differently - lots of small files, large streaming media files, indexed databases, all require considering the intended use. In desktop use, I've watched the typical file i/o and can say it tended to stay below 4 or 5 MB/s peak for most things. And I've seen raid 5 rebuilds sustain 225 MB/s on the same system. So, sure move the r/w tasks off disks competing with other r/w tasks and leave the read only tasks on the man system disk. You'll see a small improvement, but in the larger scheme of things, outside of uncompressing the kernel, open office, firefox, or gcc, it won't matter much more than 1% or 2% improvement. Bob - -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list
