So, I'm just going to cut to the chase. My current partition layout is:
1. UEFI on GPT, Debian 12 is the only OS currently on the drive (not counting Virt Manager VMs)
2. EFI system partition, FAT32, approx 500MB
3. Root partition, ext4, approx 100GB
4. Home partition, which takes up most of the disk, also ext4, approx 1.5TB+
5. Swap partition, approx 16GB
6. Some unallocated space at the end of the disk, for SSD overprovisioning
Sounds like a pretty simple layout, right? But I've realized that ext4 doesnt support things like compression, deduplication, data checksumming. And so now I'm wondering if it's worthwhile to look into alt partitioning layouts. My laptop is a single disk machine, nothing fancy like RAID going on.
I've heard of other FSes like btrfs, LVM, xfs, f2fs, etc. I'm just wondering if they're worth the hassle of a reinstall. And I dont really know anything about how to set them up. In the past, I created my partitions in advance, then gave a directive to OS installers to use what was already set up. This means my partition sizes are inflexible and "set in stone" (resizing is possible, ofc, if wanted). If I wanted to change partition sizes, I'd just back up my personal files, wipe the disk, start fresh. But this eats into valuable time.
I can definitely envision a scenario where, under my current layout, the root partition runs out of space and needs to be enlarged. Or it eventually turns out that I don't have enough swap.
I'm also using Timeshift for snapshots, but I clone my home partition with Clonezilla from time to time. So my personal files are protected.
At some point I'd like to try encryption with LUKS or plain dmcrypt, I get the feeling that thos will work better with a different partition layout. I'd prefer that all Linux related partitions be encrypted. And I don't want to have to type in a password to individually unlock every partition.
Is it worth looking into other layouts, or should I just KISS and keep what I have?
1. UEFI on GPT, Debian 12 is the only OS currently on the drive (not counting Virt Manager VMs)
2. EFI system partition, FAT32, approx 500MB
3. Root partition, ext4, approx 100GB
4. Home partition, which takes up most of the disk, also ext4, approx 1.5TB+
5. Swap partition, approx 16GB
6. Some unallocated space at the end of the disk, for SSD overprovisioning
Sounds like a pretty simple layout, right? But I've realized that ext4 doesnt support things like compression, deduplication, data checksumming. And so now I'm wondering if it's worthwhile to look into alt partitioning layouts. My laptop is a single disk machine, nothing fancy like RAID going on.
I've heard of other FSes like btrfs, LVM, xfs, f2fs, etc. I'm just wondering if they're worth the hassle of a reinstall. And I dont really know anything about how to set them up. In the past, I created my partitions in advance, then gave a directive to OS installers to use what was already set up. This means my partition sizes are inflexible and "set in stone" (resizing is possible, ofc, if wanted). If I wanted to change partition sizes, I'd just back up my personal files, wipe the disk, start fresh. But this eats into valuable time.
I can definitely envision a scenario where, under my current layout, the root partition runs out of space and needs to be enlarged. Or it eventually turns out that I don't have enough swap.
I'm also using Timeshift for snapshots, but I clone my home partition with Clonezilla from time to time. So my personal files are protected.
At some point I'd like to try encryption with LUKS or plain dmcrypt, I get the feeling that thos will work better with a different partition layout. I'd prefer that all Linux related partitions be encrypted. And I don't want to have to type in a password to individually unlock every partition.
Is it worth looking into other layouts, or should I just KISS and keep what I have?
Statistics: Posted by Enigma83 — 2024-01-31 10:14 — Replies 2 — Views 91