[geeks] Cheap Dell Servers

der Mouse mouse at Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA
Thu Feb 7 15:16:24 CST 2008


>> Yeah, worrying about RPM makes about as much sense as worrying about
>> c/h/s geometry does - "none", unless you're using fairly old disks.
> I thought FFS relies on the disklabel parameters for avoiding
> fragmentation?

I don't think so.  How could it tell if you get them wrong?  Suppose I
have a disk with (say) five 105-sector tracks per cylinder.  (Ignore
ZBR for the moment.)  I build a filesystem and it's fine.  Then I dd
the filesystem onto a disk that has (say) 73-sector tracks.  Does it
magically become more fragmented?  The on-disk layout is exactly what
I'd get from a filesystem of the same size constructed on the
73-sec/trk disk with a disklabel that incorrectly claims its geometry
is that of the 105-sec/trk disk, after all.

What it does use the geometry for is attempts to compensate for
head-switch delay, rotational latency, seek times, and the like.
Things like ZBR, track caches, and drive-level reordering of requests
invalidate most of the assumptions underlying these attempts anyway.

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