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linuca
July 24th, 2009, 06:43 PM
Hi everybody! I just installed my ubuntu, with three partitions:

/dev/sda1 is swap
/dev/sda3 is /home
/dev/sda5 is /

A friend just told me that the performance is better if the / partition is in second place and the /home partition is third. I already installed the machine, does it worth it to install it all over again, just to change the order of the /home and / partitions? Or is it ok the way I did it?

Thanks.
philcamlin
July 24th, 2009, 06:44 PM
the way you did it is ok :D
bacil
July 24th, 2009, 06:48 PM
it used to make sense on older systems to put swap on firs set of blocks since when system was swaping heads on disks didn have to do much movemets. But these days are long gone. your setup is OK :-)
linuca
July 24th, 2009, 06:53 PM
I knew it!

Thank you guys!
Bucky Ball
July 24th, 2009, 06:55 PM
It is fastest if the OS (/) is in sda1. Why? It is the fastest part of the drive. The /swap should always go last as in modern machines it is barely touched (once you get to 2Gb+ RAM):

/
/home
/swap

Not quite sure what people are saying, here. Think about it. The way it is set up, the OS partition (which is probably about 10-20Gb) could be 100-750Gb away from the fastest part of the drive.

It does make a difference as all your programs are running from the slowest part of the drive (sda1 is on the outer edge, your current partition is closest to the middle).

There is a good reason A/V is recorded on to the first part of a different drive, not just partition. This is just a smaller version of that.
raymondh
July 24th, 2009, 06:59 PM
I knew it!

Thank you guys!

And should you get interested in the WHY's of it (swap and where should you put it, etc)

http://www.ranish.com/part/primer.htm
http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/geom/tracksZBR-c.html
http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Multi-Disk-HOWTO.html#toc3
linuca
July 24th, 2009, 07:15 PM
Not sure what to believe anymore...

When this kind of issues comes up, I always get complete different answers...

I'm a web developer, I'll use php5, apache, mysql. Problably a VM with window$ XP and Vista.

Regards.
merlinus
July 24th, 2009, 08:17 PM
With the speed of modern processors, to say nothing of core duo and quad, and huge amounts of ram, IMFFHO this is an issue that is hardly relevant.

Better to spend your time on exploring and learning linux. Look for the forest, and don't get lost in all the little trees.

YMMV, as always!