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Recommended block size on ext2fs & large IDE drive?

Recommended block size on ext2fs & large IDE drive?

Post by Jim Milli » Sat, 21 Feb 1998 04:00:00



I'm going to buy a large (4.0 GB) IDE drive for backup.
It's going to host almost exclusively tarballs and other
compressed files (.mpegs, .jpegs, etc.).  The motherboard
supports 4 IDE devices, so this will be my last open device.
There are already 2 IDE hard drives installed (1.2 MB WD's;
all three drives will be Western Digitals -- I've already
discovered different vendor's IDE drives don't get along
well), and one ATAPI-IDE CD ROM.  I'm going to make it a
single partition.  It's not going to be the boot drive,
either.

My question is: Should I specify a different block size on
such a large drive?  If so, what size?

The default ext2 block size is 1024, I believe.  In my
research, the only clear advice I found was for xfs, which is
SGI's journalled file system.  Their recommendation was to
go with 4096 for partitions over 500 MB.  Of course ext2 and
xfs aren't the same thing.

Any thoughts?

Any hd tuning suggestions, in addition?

TIA,

        Jim

 
 
 
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Recommended block size on ext2fs & large IDE drive?

Post by David Ree » Sun, 22 Feb 1998 04:00:00



> I'm going to buy a large (4.0 GB) IDE drive for backup.
> It's going to host almost exclusively tarballs and other
> compressed files (.mpegs, .jpegs, etc.).  The motherboard
> supports 4 IDE devices, so this will be my last open device.
> There are already 2 IDE hard drives installed (1.2 MB WD's;
> all three drives will be Western Digitals -- I've already
> discovered different vendor's IDE drives don't get along
> well), and one ATAPI-IDE CD ROM.  I'm going to make it a
> single partition.  It's not going to be the boot drive,
> either.

> My question is: Should I specify a different block size on
> such a large drive?  If so, what size?

> The default ext2 block size is 1024, I believe.  In my
> research, the only clear advice I found was for xfs, which is
> SGI's journalled file system.  Their recommendation was to
> go with 4096 for partitions over 500 MB.  Of course ext2 and
> xfs aren't the same thing.

> Any thoughts?

Well, small block sizes are good when you're storing a lot of small
files.  This way, at most 1K is wasted.  If you use 4K block sizes, and
you only store a whole bunch of small files (smaller than block size)
you also end up with wasted space.  But, you also waste space for larger
files too.  For example, if you have a 5K file with 4K blocks, 3K is
wasted.  I think you get the idea.  I'm not sure how performance differs
when you vary block sizes, but I'd be willing to bet, it'd be a little
faster with large block sizes.  As for which block size you should go
for, well, I always use either 1024 or 2048 block sizes, just to save
space.

Quote:> Any hd tuning suggestions, in addition?

Play with hdparm a little, and make sure DMA is on if your Motherboard
supports it.

-Dave

 
 
 
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1. Large IDE hard drive & "Big IDEs" HOWTO

(Lifted from my nephew who is presently denied access to News Groups:)

Subject: Large IDE hard drives.

 Help!

 I am unable to access my large IDE drive.  Yes, I have read the "big-ide"
 help document (which did contain useful information).

 I have just installed the Slackware 3.0.0 (ELF) from the 5 CD-ROM set.

 I have 1.2GB(hda) and 200MB(hdb) IDE drives on my system.  I have installed
 Linux on hdb (200MB), dedicating the drive to a ext2 file system and a swap
 partition.

 I have an fairly old system, so I have to use EZ drive software to access
 my large IDE drive under DOS/Windows 95.  I believe it resides in the boot
 sector.

 I currently boot Linux from a floppy.

 I have added the lines:

   append="hd=2477,16,63 hd=683,16,38"

   linear

 to my "lilo.conf" file, and executed lilo to update the boot sector (of the
 floppy I boot from).

 When I boot I receive messages indicating that the above lines have indeed
 gone into effect.

 Incidently, when I boot, I get the message:

   "No BIOS32 extensions present.  This release still depends on it. Sorry."

 If I try to mount my large drive (which is unfortunatly, partitioned/formatted
 as one large DOS [VFAT] drive) with

    mount -t msdos /dev/hda /mnt

 I receive the error message:

    "wrong fs type or bad superblock on /dev/hda"

 I have no trouble mounting DOS floppies (/dev/fd0).

 If I run Linux fdisk, go to expert mode and change the heads and cylinders
 to the "bogus" values (i.e., 618 cyls, 64 heads), then look at the partition
 table, I get several errors.  Under DOS or Windows, Norton Disk Doctor says
 that my partition table (and everything else about my drive) is fine.

 Any help accessing my large drive would be appreciated.

Ed can be reached directly at:


 He  and I thank you.

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