Linux and Hard drives

[mjl1976]

Is there any differance in the way linux(desktop user) accesses a harddrive and vista access a harddrive.

i hope my question is clear.

 

[thebeephaha]

Not really, of course it uses a different partition but aside from that.

 

[Malakai]

IIRC the only thing here that impacts performance is the file system type. Vista only uses NTFS, but there are many choices for filesystems in linux.

IMO the beauty of linux is you can use the file system that performs the best for exactly what you need it to do. Like gentoo users usually keep their portage directory on a reiserfs partition since reiser is insanely fast with lots of small files. I like reiser on my os partition for that reason, but prefer tweaked ext3 for other stuff. Also nice that theres a windows app that can access ext3 iirc

There are also constantly new linux file system types coming out, Windows is so boring. Ext4 anyone?

Also drivers can be an issue, but pretty much every hard drive controller out is supported in the newest linux kernels. Even i7 stuff

 

[geiger]

Linux drive volumes don't have the same fragmentation issues as windows systems.

 

[Malakai]

They can actually still get a little cluttered, but not like NTFS. After years on the same gentoo box with the same ext3/reiserfs layouts, it is still as zippy as a week old windows install.

Tho in MS defense I have found that vista 64 with a defrag every month stays much faster than xp over time.

 

[nhtshot]

They can actually still get a little cluttered, but not like NTFS.

That's because most unix/linux FS, including ext3,ext4,reiser,xfs,zfs, handle initial allocations very differently.

NTFS and Fat/Fat32 all try to put newer data toward the front of the disk. Linux FS's don't do that. They intentionally spread data out with large gaps in between files. When you get over 80% usage, you'll notice a performance drop on writes, since it gets harder to find new places to stuff data, but until then, fragmentation (in the windows sense) stays pretty much at bay.

It's very similar to how Netware did/does store files. Novell was crazy fast up until you hit 80% space used. Of course, if you managed to get to 100% full, Netware bombed.

 

[Malakai]

Good info, thanks. I usually shoot for no more than 80% full anyway on a given drive. Maybe a little less than that for OS drive. I need to replace my little raptor its getting much too small =)
I forsee striped short stroked (say that 10 times fast) 640gb wd blacks in my future.....