From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: David Miller Subject: Re: Any pros or cons of using full disk versus partitons? Date: Wed, 13 Apr 2011 13:21:12 -0700 (PDT) Message-ID: <20110413.132112.102552472.davem@davemloft.net> References: <07a801cbfa12$64b8a950$2e29fbf0$@gmail.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: Text/Plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Return-path: In-Reply-To: <07a801cbfa12$64b8a950$2e29fbf0$@gmail.com> Sender: linux-raid-owner@vger.kernel.org To: mjtice@gmail.com Cc: linux-raid@vger.kernel.org List-Id: linux-raid.ids From: "Matthew Tice" Date: Wed, 13 Apr 2011 13:38:39 -0600 > So of course it technically doesn't matter but are there certain > (non-apparent) repercussions for choosing one over the other? It seems to > save a couple steps by using the whole disk (not having to partition) - but > is that it? One thing I'm thinking about the pros of using partitions is if > all your disks (or some) are different sizes - then you can set the > partition sizes the same. First, you sent this to "linux-raid-owner" instead of just "linux-raid". The former goes to me, not to the mailing list. I've corrected it in the CC: Second, to answer your question, for some disk label variants you risk over-writing the disk label if you use the whole device as part of your RAID volume. This definitely will happen, for example, with Sun disk labels.