[arch-general] fdisk vs. gdisk for GPT partitioning

[Ido Rosen]

On Wed, Dec 17, 2014 at 10:04 AM, David J. Haines <djhaines at gmx.com> 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 at gmx.com> 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 at gmx.com
> 0xAFB3D16D - F929 270F B7C3 78AE A741  434F A7C6 F264 AFB3 D16C