2016-09-01 15:51 GMT+03:00 Michael Mol <mike...@gmail.com>: > > On Thursday, September 01, 2016 12:09:09 PM gevisz wrote: >> 2016-09-01 11:54 GMT+03:00 Neil Bothwick <n...@digimed.co.uk>: >> > On Thu, 1 Sep 2016 11:49:43 +0300, gevisz wrote: >> >> > If your filesystem becomes corrupt (and you are unable to >> >> > repair it), *all* of your data is lost (instead of just >> >> > one partition). That's the only disadvantage I can think >> >> > of. >> >> >> >> That is exactly what I am afraid of! >> >> >> >> So, the 20-years old rule of thumb is still valid. :( >> >> >> >> > I don't like partitions either (after some years, I >> >> > always found that sizes don't match my requirements any >> >> > more), >> >> >> >> And this is exactly the reason why I do not want to partition >> >> my new hard drive! :) >> > >> > Have you considered LVM? You get the benefits of separate filesystems >> > without the limitations of inflexible partitioning. >> >> I am afraid of LVM because of the same reason as described below: >> >> returning to the "old good times" of MS DOS 6.22, I do remember that working >> then on 40MB (yes, megabytes) hard drive I used some program that >> compressed all the data before saving them on that hard drive. >> Unfortunately, one day, because of the corruption, I lost all the data on >> that hard drive. Since then, I am very much afraid of compressed or >> encrypted hard drives. > > LVM doesn't *need* to do any of that. It will only do as much as you tell it > to do. If you only want to use it as a way of reshaping relatively simple > partitions, you can use it for that. > > Honestly, I tend not to create separate partitions for separate mount points > these days. At least, not on personal systems. For servers, it's can be > beneficial to have /var separate from /, or /var/log separate from /var, or > /var/spool, or /var/lib/mysql, or what have you. But the biggest driver for > that, IME, is if one of those fills up, it can't take down the rest of the > host. > > In your case, I'd suggest using a single / filesystem. If it works, it works. > If it doesn't, you'll know in the future where you need to be more flexible; > there's no single panacea.
Thank you for the reply. And I even agree with you to the point that on a Linux desktop it may be enough to have just 3 different partitions: one - for /, second - for swap (yes, one can do without it nowadays), and third - for /home. But you probably missed the point that it goes about an external drive dedicated to backups only.
