On Wed, Dec 17, 2014 at 10:04 AM, David J. Haines <djhaines@xxxxxxx> wrote: > On Wed, Dec 17, 2014 at 02:30:43AM +0100, Neven Sajko wrote: >> On 16 December 2014 at 20:52, David J. Haines <djhaines@xxxxxxx> wrote: >> > gdisk is also capable of placing new partitions at the end of a block of >> > empty space without having to do manual calcuation of the start sector. >> > I personally find this behavior invaluable. >> I'm curious why do you allocate partitions to the end of the disk. Do you >> want to be able to resize them more easily, or something else? > > For rotational media, you generally want to put your more-used data on > the outside of the platters (the "beginning" of the disk from > partitioning tools' perspective) because the data density of the > platters is constant throughout, meaning that more data will pass under > the heads in a given unit of time when they're at the outside of the > platter, as opposed to the inside. > > Thus, you generally want to put things like /, /var, and /home on the > outside (the beginning) and things like swap on the inside (the end), > unless swapping happens to be what you want your system to really excel > at. I don't know if this is logic is still true with modern rotational disks (SMR/PMR/PCMR), or if it is as simple as beginning and end of block device translating to outer and inner platter sections -- I think there is some level of indirection. It does not diminish your argument for using gdisk, though. > > -- > David J. Haines > djhaines@xxxxxxx > 0xAFB3D16D - F929 270F B7C3 78AE A741 434F A7C6 F264 AFB3 D16C
