On Friday, April 29, 2011 02:04:56 pm Jeff Lasman wrote: > With such huge drives, and Maildir directories installed in /home (in > Maildir each email is in its own file), what should I look at in terms of > block sizes and maximum inodes, to keep maximum efficiency in drive space > usage, in speed of access, and in memory usage. > > My biggest concern is in the minimum size of a file. Maildir uses a > separate file for each email. For example, how much space will a 3.0k > email take up by default on a 1.6 TB partition vs on a 3.2 TB partition,
I think I may have figured it out. I already knew how to form a Google search to tell me the size of a partition, and I found commmands to tell me the size of a block (is that the minimum file size?), and the maximum number of inodes. Then I checked some or my machines running 32-bit CentOS 5.5 with small (86G) home partitions, and one on a 64-bit CentOS 5.5-based system with an 830G home partition. They all use a 4096-byte block size, which I now believe is the standard irrespective of partition size (ext3). Does anyone know if that's true? And on that largest machine I've got 224.5 million inodes available. So it appears I'll not have a problem building out a system with a very large /home partition size. Now my question is, with 2 2TB drives should I use them as one 4TB file system, or 2 2TB file systems. Before thinking that I'd be foolish to give up the advantage of RAID (since 2TB is probably enough for this system) let me point out that in over ten years running software RAID in datacenters, Only twice have I had drive failures, but I have often had RAID failures and have had to rebuild. I'm not sure that with modern SATA drives and daily backups RAID is that important. Any comments on my RAID issue? Thanks. Jeff -- Jeff Lasman Post Office Box 52200, Riverside, CA 92517 Our jplists address used on lists is for list email only Phone +1 909 266-9209, or see: "http://www.nobaloney.net/contactus.html"; _______________________________________________ LinuxUsers mailing list LinuxUsers@socallinux.org http://socallinux.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/linuxusers
