why separate filesystems?

Anthony Shipman als at bohra.cpg.oz
Mon Aug 27 13:30:44 AEST 1990


In article <1990Aug24.091111.508 at bbt.se>, pgd at bbt.se (P.Garbha) writes:
> In article <1053 at p4tustin.UUCP> carl at p4tustin.UUCP (Carl W. Bergerson) writes:
> >Performance:
> >
> >	"Smaller filesystems are faster" - Xenix Installation Guide
> >
> >	This is generally true for all versions of *ix.
> 
> Can you explain why? Becuase I cannot see why it should be like that.
> The only reason I can think of is reduced head-movement, but if you
> divide one disk into to parts, that effectively defeats that, by
> having to move the head back and forth between the parts.
> 
> I tend to believe that dividing a file system makes it slower, because
> you get less free space on each part, and UNIX file-system with little

If you can put the swap space in the middle between two file systems then I
would expect this to improve overall system performance once swapping/paging
starts. The average head movement between swap I/O and file I/O should be less.

-- 
Anthony Shipman                               ACSnet: als at bohra.cpg.oz.au
Computer Power Group
9th Flr, 616 St. Kilda Rd.,
St. Kilda, Melbourne, Australia
D



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