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Partition
Master Boot Record (MBR)
Used for a long time to organize data, also called DOS-Partitions. Partition information is stored in the MBR of the device.
- Widely spread and support in nearly all operating systems.
- Very well documented.
- Maximum of 4 primary partitions per device.
- Maximum size of the device 2 TiB.
- Using one as extended partition (of the 4 primary), it is possible to create additional logical partitions to work around the problem of only 4 partitions.
Programs
The following programs can be used to create, alter, and remove MBR partitions:
| Program | Package | GUI | Function |
|---|---|---|---|
| cfdisk | sys-apps/util-linux | No | Create, alter, and remove partitions. |
| fdisk | sys-apps/util-linux | No | Create, alter, and remove partitions. |
| parted | sys-block/parted | No | Create, alter, remove, check, copy partitions and file systems. |
| gparted | sys-block/gparted | GTK+ | GNOME Partition Editor; create, alter, and remove partitions. |
| partitionmanager | sys-block/partitionmanager | Qt5 | KDE Partition Manager; create, alter, and remove partitions. |
Supported Operating Systems
- BSD (Mac OS X) - full support.
- DOS - full support.
- Linux - full support.
- Solaris - full support.
- Windows - full support.
GUID Partition Table (GPT)
In GUID partition system a small amount of disk space at the beginning of the device is used to store the partition information. Its main advantage is the supported size of storage devices and the creation of a backup of the partition table at the end of the device.
- Widely spread and support in most modern operating systems.
- Used to require the GRUB2 bootloader, but the functionality was backported to earlier versions.
- Maximum of 128 primary partitions per device.
- Maximum size of the device 8 ZiB.
Programs
The following programs can be used to create, alter, and remove GPT partitions:
| Program | Package | GUI | Function |
|---|---|---|---|
| gptfdisk | sys-apps/gptfdisk | No | Create, alter, remove, convert MBR to GPT, and recreate partition tables from backup. |
| parted | sys-block/parted | No | Create, alter, remove, check, copy partitions and file systems. |
| gparted | sys-block/gparted | GTK+ | GNOME Partition Editor; create, alter, and remove partitions. |
| partitionmanager | sys-block/partitionmanager | Qt5 | KDE Partition Manager; create, alter, and remove partitions. |
Supported Operating Systems
- BSD (Mac OS X) - full support.
- Linux - full support.
- Windows - Installs into the /boot/EFI/Microsoft/ subdirectory of the ESP.
Logical Volume Manager (LVM)
LVM is a complete suite to dynamically manage partitions, storage devices or other underlying systems as volumes.
- Widely spread and supported in most modern operating systems.
- Maximum size of the device depends on the underlying systems limitations.
- Maximum size of Logical Volumes is 8 EiB on 64-bit Linux and 16 TiB on 32-bit Linux.
- Storage devices, RAID system, network storage (e.g. iSCSI) can be used as Physical Volumes (no need of partitioning).
- Provides basic forms of data redundancy (RAID 1, RAID 5) or stripset (RAID 0) for performance.
To use features like dynamic resizing, the used filesystem should be resizeable as well.
Programs
The following programs come with sys-fs/lvm2
| Program | GUI | Function |
|---|---|---|
| pvcreate | No | Create or remove Physical Volumes of storage devices/systems. |
| vgcreate | No | Groups PV as Volume Group. |
| lvcreate | No | Create, alter, and remove volumes. |
The following programs can be used to create, alter, and remove LVM partitions:
| Program | Package | GUI | Function |
|---|---|---|---|
| partitionmanager | sys-block/partitionmanager | Qt5 | KDE Partition Manager; create, alter, and remove LVM PVs, VGs, LVs. |
Supported Operating Systems
- BSD - cannot boot itself, needs Linux GRUB2 with dual boot.
- Linux - full support.
This is the Linux specific LVM implementation, other OS have their own systems, see Logical volume management.
ZFS
ZFS is a complete suite to dynamically manage storage and file system.
- Support in Linux (via ZFSOnLinux), Solaris, FreeBSD.
- Needs GRUB2 bootoader.
- Maximum size of a single zpool is 256 ZiB
- Storage devices can be used complete as vdev (no need of partitioning)
- Zpools are created once and cannot be resized afterwards. Every volume has access to the full capacity of the zpool, this can be reduced via quota.
- It provides forms of redundancy like RAID 1 (mirroring), and RAID 0 (striping) for performance. Also supports RAID 5, RAID 6, etc.
- Has its own filesystem with features like compression, copy on write, and deduplication.
Programs
The following programs come with sys-fs/zfs:
| Programraid1 | GUI | Function |
|---|---|---|
| zpool | No | Manage and organize vdevs in zpools. |
| zfs | No | Create, alter (resize), and remove volumes. |
Supported Operating Systems
- BSD - full support.
- Linux - built as external module because of the CDDL and GPL licence conflict - mostly supported.
- Solaris - full support.