From: utzoo!decvax!cca!dan2@BBN-UNIX@sri-unix Newsgroups: net.unix-wizards Title: Re: V6 to V7 conversion Article-I.D.: sri-unix.2540 Posted: Sat Aug 7 18:38:05 1982 Received: Sun Aug 8 00:48:28 1982 From: Dan FranklinDate: 20 Jul 1982 12:52:39 EDT (Tuesday) The reasons I know for continuing to divide disks into partitions (usually two: a small one for the root, and /usr) are: 1. Efficiency. With inodes located at one end of the file system, resolving a pathname requires repeatedly moving the head from one end of the file system to the other as first an inode, then a series of directory blocks, then another inode, etc. are read in. Having several smaller filesystems minimizes the total head movement and hence the time it takes. (This reason goes away with the 4.2BSD filesystem organization.) 2. Protection. Should something horrible happen to part of the disk, it would be nice if it only incapacitated the root (which is small and can be brought back quickly; also doesn't change as often as /usr, so going to the morning's dump is unlikely to bother anyone) or if it only broke /usr (which lets you use all the programs on the root to find and fix the problems with /usr). "Something horrible" can also include running out of space; it's nice when running out of space on /usr doesn't stop system programs using the root (or using pipes) from working.