[gentoo-user] partitioning for multimedia performance and dual-booting linux/windex

[gentoo-user] partitioning for multimedia performance and dual-booting linux/windex

[Robert Persson]

I have just acquired a nice big PATA disk and am now faced with the job of 
deciding how to partition it. I actually have two questions and I would be 
grateful for any thoughts. 

The current disk is a 40GB 133MHz one with 1MB cache.
The new one is 250GB, 133MHz with 8MB cache.
The reason for the new disk is to store multimedia samples, to allow dual-boot 
into windows for some multimedia work, and to get better read/write 
performance for sound, and perhaps also video editing.

The questions I have are:
1. What file system should I use for shared storage and scratchspace between 
the two OSs?
2. Would it be feasible and worthwhile to stripe a linux scratchspace volume 
across both disks?

QUESTION 1:
As far as the dual-booting is concerned, I will need to do it sometimes when 
there isn't a reliable *ix tool for the job, but I don't want to find myself 
trapped into using Windows for day-to-day stuff. For instance I may find 
myself forced to use Adobe Premiere for video editing now and then for the 
moment, but I would want to be gravitate back to Cinelerra as soon as some of 
the more serious bugs have been ironed out.

For this reason, and also because I remember from my own past experience that 
NTFS is an unspeakable atrocity (even when accessed under windows) I have 
been thinking of keeping the Windows partition fairly small and of installing 
third-party driver(s) to access linux-native filesystems to share data, 
rather than the other way round.

The three options I have for this are:
1. install the windows ext2/3 driver.
2. install rfsd (http://rfsd.sourceforge.net) to access reiserfs partitions.
3. Install the crossmeta XFS driver if I can get hold of it (I'm not sure 
whether it's part of the free NFS driver download on the website or not).

I imagine that one of these arrangments would be adequate for getting at my 
mp3s and oggs and stuff, but what kind of performance could I expect from 
these drivers, as compared to NTFS if I were to try audio multitracking, or 
even video manipulation? If I could get hold of that crossmeta XFS driver, 
would I get XFS big-file performance like I would under IRIX or Linux?

The bottom line in all this is that, if there is a tradeoff to be made between 
Linux and Windows, it is Windows that must give way. XP once committed 
suicide on me three times in two weeks, forcing me to abandon an important 
project while I reinstalled the monstrosity. There can be no forgiveness for 
that. That's when I married the penguin. You should only marry people an 
operating systems you trust.

QUESTION 2:
I actually have an intel sata controller on my motherboard and so should be 
able to set a raid 0 array that is accessible from both linux and windows.

Unfortunately I don't have the money to be buying a pair of sata disks at the 
moment, which is why I have got the extra pata disk to keep me going.

Am I correct in understanding that I can use LVM2 to stripe a volume across 
more than one disk, just like a raid 0 setup, even if the disks are quite 
dissimilar? Would it be possible (or worthwhile) to allocate my old 40GB disk 
and a portion of my new disk (say another 40GB) to a single logical volume to 
be used as a fast audio and video scratchspace? (For Linux, that is -- I am 
aware that it wouldn't be accessible from Windows). I would keep the rest of 
disk in normal partitions to reduce the risk of losing all my data to disk 
failure.

Would I, in the future be able to set up logical volumes spanning a larger 
mixed group of pata and sata disks? And would that make a serious enough 
difference to read/write performance to be worth doing?

Many thanks
Robert

-- 
Robert Persson

Conspiracy Bears:
Once upon a time there were lots of conspiracy bears...

-- 
gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-user] partitioning for multimedia performance and dual-booting linux/windex

[Neil Bothwick]

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On Wed, 19 Apr 2006 18:11:55 -0700, Robert Persson wrote:

> Am I correct in understanding that I can use LVM2 to stripe a volume
> across more than one disk, just like a raid 0 setup, even if the disks
> are quite dissimilar? Would it be possible (or worthwhile) to allocate
> my old 40GB disk and a portion of my new disk (say another 40GB) to a
> single logical volume to be used as a fast audio and video
> scratchspace? (For Linux, that is -- I am aware that it wouldn't be
> accessible from Windows). I would keep the rest of disk in normal
> partitions to reduce the risk of losing all my data to disk failure.

It is perfectly possible, but performance may suffer if one disk is
slower than the other, compared with using the fast disk alone. Another
option may be to use the old disk for the operating systems and the new
one for data. Speed of the OS disk only affects program loading time,
you would then get maximum performance when using the programs.  


-- 
Neil Bothwick

Hot glass looks exactly the same as cold glass.

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Re: [gentoo-user] partitioning for multimedia performance and dual-booting linux/windex

[Robert Persson]

On Thursday 20 April 2006 00:46 Neil Bothwick was like:
> > Am I correct in understanding that I can use LVM2 to stripe a volume
> > across more than one disk, just like a raid 0 setup, even if the disks
> > are quite dissimilar? Would it be possible (or worthwhile) to allocate
> > my old 40GB disk and a portion of my new disk (say another 40GB) to a
> > single logical volume to be used as a fast audio and video
> > scratchspace? (For Linux, that is -- I am aware that it wouldn't be
> > accessible from Windows). I would keep the rest of disk in normal
> > partitions to reduce the risk of losing all my data to disk failure.
>
> It is perfectly possible, but performance may suffer if one disk is
> slower than the other, compared with using the fast disk alone. Another
> option may be to use the old disk for the operating systems and the new
> one for data. Speed of the OS disk only affects program loading time,
> you would then get maximum performance when using the programs.  

Thanks for your help once again, Neil.

The problem I am trying to solve is less about getting best all-round disk 
performance than it is to get super-duper disk performance when doing 
extremely disk intensive tasks such as video and audio editing. I'm not sure 
that having the OS or the swap on different disks because if I have enough 
memory I shouldn't need to access them very much while doing the audio and 
video stuff.

The disks are probably not too dissimilar in terms of read and write speed 
(I'll need to look up the specs to verify this). However the cache sizes are 
quite different: 1MB as opposed to 8MB. Would the smaller cache make the 
older disk much slower in practice when it comes to writing or reading very 
large files -- slow enough to bog down the other one if a volume was striped 
across them?

Robert

-- 
Robert Persson

Conspiracy Bears:
Once upon a time there were lots of conspiracy bears...


-- 
gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-user] partitioning for multimedia performance and dual-booting linux/windex

[Walter Dnes]

On Wed, Apr 19, 2006 at 06:11:55PM -0700, Robert Persson wrote

> The questions I have are:
> 1. What file system should I use for shared storage and scratchspace between 
> the two OSs?
> 2. Would it be feasible and worthwhile to stripe a linux scratchspace volume 
> across both disks?
> 
> QUESTION 1:
> As far as the dual-booting is concerned, I will need to do it sometimes when 
> there isn't a reliable *ix tool for the job, but I don't want to find myself 
> trapped into using Windows for day-to-day stuff. For instance I may find 
> myself forced to use Adobe Premiere for video editing now and then for the 
> moment, but I would want to be gravitate back to Cinelerra as soon as some of 
> the more serious bugs have been ironed out.
> 
> For this reason, and also because I remember from my own past experience that 
> NTFS is an unspeakable atrocity (even when accessed under windows) I have 
> been thinking of keeping the Windows partition fairly small and of installing 
> third-party driver(s) to access linux-native filesystems to share data, 
> rather than the other way round.
> 
> The three options I have for this are:
> 1. install the windows ext2/3 driver.
> 2. install rfsd (http://rfsd.sourceforge.net) to access reiserfs partitions.
> 3. Install the crossmeta XFS driver if I can get hold of it (I'm not sure 
> whether it's part of the free NFS driver download on the website or not).

  Howsabout using FAT32 (aka vfat) for the data partitions that need to
be accessed by both Windows and Linux?  Both Windows and Linux can read
and write easily to vfat.

-- 
Walter Dnes <waltdnes@waltdnes.org> In linux /sbin/init is Job #1
My musings on technology and security at http://tech_sec.blog.ca
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Re: [gentoo-user] partitioning for multimedia performance and dual-booting linux/windex

[Neil Bothwick]

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On Sat, 22 Apr 2006 23:05:37 -0400, Walter Dnes wrote:

>   Howsabout using FAT32 (aka vfat) for the data partitions that need to
> be accessed by both Windows and Linux?  Both Windows and Linux can read
> and write easily to vfat.

FAT has a 4GB file size limit under Windows, 2GB under Linux, which makes
it unsuitable for most multimedia usage.


-- 
Neil Bothwick

Remember the good old days, when CPU was singular?

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Re: [gentoo-user] partitioning for multimedia performance and dual-booting linux/windex

[Robert Persson]

On Sunday 23 April 2006 03:00 Neil Bothwick was like:
> On Sat, 22 Apr 2006 23:05:37 -0400, Walter Dnes wrote:
> >   Howsabout using FAT32 (aka vfat) for the data partitions that need to
> > be accessed by both Windows and Linux?  Both Windows and Linux can read
> > and write easily to vfat.
>
> FAT has a 4GB file size limit under Windows, 2GB under Linux, which makes
> it unsuitable for most multimedia usage.

Thanks very much Neil and Walter for your advice.

I think Neil is right about fat32. It also has other problems such as lack of 
permissions or journaling, as well as performance issues. However it is 
certainly the simplest way of sharing a partition between operating systems.

I have installed rfsd in windows. It seems to work very well, but, unless I 
have missed something, it is a read-only driver. That can actually be useful 
if you want to access stuff from within windows without putting it at risk of 
virus damage. If I also mount my windows installation using the (read-only) 
ntfs driver under linux, then I have a way to share files in both directions, 
albeit not an ideal one. (I have considered using captive-ntfs for full r/w 
access, but I find the windows permissions don't work under linux, as far as 
I can tell.)

I'll get around to trying out crossmeta for xfs read/write at some point soon 
and let you all know how it goes.

Robert
-- 
Robert Persson

Conspiracy Bears:
Once upon a time there were lots of conspiracy bears...

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gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-user] partitioning for multimedia performance and dual-booting linux/windex

[Liviu]

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>
> 1. install the windows ext2/3 driver.
> 2. install rfsd (http://rfsd.sourceforge.net) to access reiserfs
> partitions.
>
An alternative for accessing in read-only mode Linux drives is
Total Commander <http://www.ghisler.com/>'s
Ext2+Reiser<http://www.ghisler.com/plugins.htm#filesys>plugin. Ext2
and ext3 work fine. Never tried ReiserFS.

"Plugin to open Ext2 and Reiser file systems on your own machine! This is
useful when you have Linux installed on the same machine (multi-boot) and
want to access your files. For security reasons, this plugin is read-only.
It combines two open source projects to access Ext2 partitions and Reiser
partitions. This plugin is Open-Source (GPL).
Version 1.3 fixes read errors with newer ReiserFS partitions."


--
Liviu

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