Skip to contentSkip to conversation

Determining maximum partition size on a hard disk

DISCUSSION Paal Chr Birkeland 2 participants 2 messages Aug 24, 2001

lore
Share & tools
lore

Paal Chr Birkeland

author
#0 lore raw
Quoted 6 lines

First I found that the maximum size of the drive Linux reports is not the maximum size I get when I calculate it from the drives geometry. Secondly, the total drive space reported by linux is not the amount available for the maximum partition.

tune2fs -m 2 /dev/hd-whatever-hdd

For some reason linux still "eats" 5% of the hdd. This for still beeing able to run smooth if hdd is maxed out, or something like that.

root@vixen:~# tune2fs -m 2 /dev/hdb1
tune2fs 1.19, 13-Jul-2000 for EXT2 FS 0.5b, 95/08/09
Setting reserved blocks percentage to 2 (256034 blocks)

Default is 5% (slackware)

This, I think, is from way back when hdds where alot smaler and then ppl forgot all about it (?). 5% of an 80 gig hdd gotta be a lot of wasted space and in no way required. I always set it lower (2% as above) and gain more useable space. Probably 1% would be enough but who's counting :o)

I dont know if the tune2fs is a slackware feature only, but i doubt it. Then again I havent really "tried" any other distro.

Inputs ?

Signature · 3 lines
Vennlig hilsen / Regards
Paal Chr Birkeland
admin@linuxnation
#1 lore raw
Quoted 7 lines · On Fri, 24 Aug 2001 10:47:28 +0200 Paal Chr Birkeland…
Quoted 6 lines

First I found that the maximum size of the drive Linux reports is not the maximum size I get when I calculate it from the drives geometry. Secondly, the total drive space reported by linux is not the amount available for the maximum partition.

Quoted 7 lines

tune2fs -m 2 /dev/hd-whatever-hdd

For some reason linux still "eats" 5% of the hdd. This for still beeing able to run smooth if hdd is maxed out, or something like that.
I dont know if the tune2fs is a slackware feature only, but i doubt it. Then again I havent really "tried" any other distro.
Inputs ?

You can you choose this when you make the filesystem..

By using the -m option to mke2fs you can set the reserved-block-percentage ... and can eay overide this then to 0 or 3 percent...

-m reserved-blocks-percentage
Specify the percentage of reserved blocks for the super-user. This value defaults to 5%.

afaik, the 5% option is a mke2fs default for all distributions.

Best regards,

Arnvid Karstad
Speedroad Networks