Re: [gentoo-user] Re: [OT] Is it still advisable to partition a big hard drive?
On Monday 05 Sep 2016 10:42:34 Hans wrote: > On 01/09/16 16:04, gevisz wrote: > > I have bought an external 5TB Western Digital hard drive > > that I am going to use mainly for backing up some files > > in my home directory and carrying a very big files, for > > example a virtual machine image file, from one computer > > to another. This hard drive is preformatted with NTFS. > > Now, I am going to format it with ext4 which probably > > will take a lot of time taking into account that it is > > going to be done via USB connection. So, before formatting > > this hard drive I would like to know if it is still > > advisable to partition big hard drives into smaller > > logical ones. > > > > For about 20 last years, following an advice of my older > > colleague, I always partitioned all my hard drives into > > the smaller logical ones and do very well know all > > disadvantages of doing so. :) > > > > But what are disadvantages of not partitioning a big > > hard drive into smaller logical ones? > > > > Is it still advisable to partition a big hard drive > > into smaller logical ones and why? > > I use 2TB USB drive with one EXT4 partition. Took about 30 seconds to > format connected to a USB2 port. Testing the drive with dd and copying > files to the drive is very slow. Don't touch "Green Drives". They die > like flies. Did you get the logical and physical sector aligned when you partitioned them? (if not sure, google for 4k sector drives). All recent versions of fdisk/gdisk/parted and friends will align them by default. How did you test it with dd and how are you copying files? How slow is slow in this case? -- Regards, Mick signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part.
[gentoo-user] Re: [OT] Is it still advisable to partition a big hard drive?
On 01/09/16 16:04, gevisz wrote: I have bought an external 5TB Western Digital hard drive that I am going to use mainly for backing up some files in my home directory and carrying a very big files, for example a virtual machine image file, from one computer to another. This hard drive is preformatted with NTFS. Now, I am going to format it with ext4 which probably will take a lot of time taking into account that it is going to be done via USB connection. So, before formatting this hard drive I would like to know if it is still advisable to partition big hard drives into smaller logical ones. For about 20 last years, following an advice of my older colleague, I always partitioned all my hard drives into the smaller logical ones and do very well know all disadvantages of doing so. :) But what are disadvantages of not partitioning a big hard drive into smaller logical ones? Is it still advisable to partition a big hard drive into smaller logical ones and why? I use 2TB USB drive with one EXT4 partition. Took about 30 seconds to format connected to a USB2 port. Testing the drive with dd and copying files to the drive is very slow. Don't touch "Green Drives". They die like flies.
Re: [gentoo-user] [OT] Is it still advisable to partition a big hard drive?
On Sunday 04 Sep 2016 17:48:14 Stroller wrote: > > On 3 Sep 2016, at 17:50, Mick wrote: > > Yes, flash drives (unlike spinning drivers) are completely digital. In > > addition, wear levelling algorithms invariably kick in and bits and bytes > > are sprayed all over the pages/modules of the memory chips. So you could > > say they are fragmented by design. > > That would seem to dismiss the problem, "oh, they're fragmented by design, > thus it's unimportant". I'm far from an expert on NOR/NAND flash drives and therefore I didn't mean to sound dismissive. I was merely highlighting the fact that the memory controller on these cards interferes with whatever our OS is trying to write on them, as the card's chip controller implements various wear levelling algorithms. > My understanding is that defragmenting a flash device (although I think, > personally, I would only do this by deleting all the files on the drive, > and copying them back) can make for faster access. > > • http://www.lagom.nl/misc/flash_fragmentation.html > • > http://www.wizcode.com/articles/comments/flash_memory_fragmentation_myths_a > nd_facts/ > > Stroller. Some of these tests assume that flushing the OS cache *also* flushes the cache on the flash drive. This is not so, especially on more modern flush drives. I've been watching the behaviour of a Verbatim 32G USB stick I use more or less daily and I am convinced that running sync following a copy operation on my PC, in no way means the cache on the flash controller is also flushed. What these tests prove is that when the card is full it takes longer to write content on it, because blocks will have to be erased before they can be written on. The cluster size is quite important for this performance, as is the size of the file(s) being copied. What I am saying is that the write operation performance is determined by the cluster size, the file size, the flash drive's cache size and most importantly by the flash drive controller's wear levelling algorithms. There is no guarantee that data will be written contiguously, although they will be written in one-block-at-a-time. The blocks themselves almost certainly will not be contiguous on a used drive. Formatting it with unsuitable logical block sizes for its physical block size will almost certainly incur a write penalty (always depending on the size of the file being written). This is what I meant when I said USB flash drives are fragmented by design. -- Regards, Mick signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part.
[gentoo-user] Former gcc "-march=atom" flag is now "-march=bonnell"
https://gcc.gnu.org/gcc-4.9/changes.html states... > Optimizing for other Intel microarchitectures have been renamed to > -march=nehalem, westmere, sandybridge, ivybridge, haswell, bonnell. My ancient Atom netbook identifies as "bonnell". [aa1][waltdnes][~] gcc -c -Q -march=native --help=target | grep -i march= -march= bonnell According to a post on the Arch forum gcc ignores "-march=atom"... https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?pid=1423395#p1423395 This is very important if you're trying to optimize for an Atom netbook. -- Walter Dnes I don't run "desktop environments"; I run useful applications
Re: [gentoo-user] [OT] Is it still advisable to partition a big hard drive?
> On 3 Sep 2016, at 17:50, Mick wrote: >> >> I understood that fragmentation can also occur on flash-based disks. >> >> Although the effect of it is not so noticeable, I understood that it still >> has one. > > Yes, flash drives (unlike spinning drivers) are completely digital. In > addition, wear levelling algorithms invariably kick in and bits and bytes are > sprayed all over the pages/modules of the memory chips. So you could say > they > are fragmented by design. That would seem to dismiss the problem, "oh, they're fragmented by design, thus it's unimportant". My understanding is that defragmenting a flash device (although I think, personally, I would only do this by deleting all the files on the drive, and copying them back) can make for faster access. • http://www.lagom.nl/misc/flash_fragmentation.html • http://www.wizcode.com/articles/comments/flash_memory_fragmentation_myths_and_facts/ Stroller.
Re: [gentoo-user] Suggestion for freenode
Am Sonntag, 4. September 2016, 06:37:36 schrieb Raymond Jennings: > I think #gentoo-mentors should be filled by people willing to serve as > mentors, and cater to devs in training who need a mentor ^^ > > What do you guys think? There's * #gentoo-dev-help for asking ebuild questions and getting help * #gentoo-proxy-maint for getting your ebuilds reviewed for inclusion into the gentoo tree -- Andreas K. Hüttel Gentoo Linux developer (council, perl, libreoffice) dilfri...@gentoo.org http://www.akhuettel.de/
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Suggestion for freenode
That channel is also on the good list, but I'm more talking about using #gentoo-mentors as a specific spot where mentors can hangout and new devs in training can find them. On Sat, Sep 3, 2016 at 11:27 PM, Hans de Graaff wrote: > On Sat, 03 Sep 2016 21:41:51 -0700, Jigme Datse Yli-RAsku wrote: > > > I like that. Haven't got to even reaching the "dev in training" stage, > > but I'd like to have some place where I can ask general gentoo-dev > > questions. I have a couple of projects which I'd like to get working > > with a simple "emerge". > > #gentoo-dev-help is an existing channel specifically for getting help > with writing ebuilds. > > Hans > > >
[gentoo-user] Re: Suggestion for freenode
On Sat, 03 Sep 2016 21:41:51 -0700, Jigme Datse Yli-RAsku wrote: > I like that. Haven't got to even reaching the "dev in training" stage, > but I'd like to have some place where I can ask general gentoo-dev > questions. I have a couple of projects which I'd like to get working > with a simple "emerge". #gentoo-dev-help is an existing channel specifically for getting help with writing ebuilds. Hans
