This page describes different kinds of storage devices in Linux.

• Performance tuning : Tips on enhancing the performance of the ATA drives in your computer (both hard drives and CD/DVD drives)
• Hard drive partitioning, and using Logical Volume Management to do it the smart way
• Hard drives: Quality and noise
• CD/DVD drives
• CD-rom burners
• USB storage

I can also recommend using Network Attached Storage (NAS)

To get maximum performance, you will have to enable DMA and a few other things. In order to check the performance use: hdparm -Tt /dev/hdX (where X is your hard drive or CD/DVD drive). Now you are ready to tweak your settings.

NOTE! The performance of the drives in your system depends on several things, among those are the kernel version and patch set you are using.

If you are using RedHat/Fedora you can configure each drive by using these settings in /etc/sysconfig/harddiskhdX (where X is your drive, e.g. in my case e and g):

USE_DMA=1
MULTIPLE_IO=16
EIDE_32BIT=3
LOOKAHEAD=1
EXTRA_PARAMS=-S242 # sleep setting.

NOTE! See the hdparm manual page for more information!
If you are using Gentoo you can edit /etc/conf.d/hdparm, and add a line for each drive:

disc0_args="-d1 -m16 -c3 -S242 -u1"
disc1_args="-d1 -m16 -c3 -S180 -u1"
cdrom0_args="-d1"

NOTE! See the hdparm manual page for more information!

Using these settings gives me a performance of (Tested using hdparm -Tt /dev/hdX):

A7V mothetboard, Promise ATA100, Maxtor 120GB, kernel 2.6.10 from kernel.org:

/dev/hde:
 Timing cached reads:   728 MB in  2.00 seconds = 363.15 MB/sec
 Timing buffered disk reads:  156 MB in  3.01 seconds =  51.85 MB/sec

I recommend using Logical Volume Management instead of regular static partitions. But if you do not have the possibility to use LVM2 I would recommend the partition scheme in table 3.1 for a desktop Gentoo system.

NOTE! /opt, /usr and /var doesn't have to be separate partitions, I just prefer it that way

I prefer to use the ext3 filesystem on my root partition, and ext2 on /boot. Ext2 uses less space, because it does not use a journal. On the rest of the partitions I prefer a fast filesystem like ReiserFS or SGI's xfs.

For more information:

LVM2 is a simple and elegant way to manage you partitions. Normal PC partitions are "hardcoded" to the disc, e.g. if one of your partitions run out of space you will have to either: 1) repartition your whole hard drive (e.g. back all data up, repartition, reinstall, restore data) or 2) buy a new hard drive and move your data to that disk. With LVM2 you could just resize your partitions (Called Logical Volumes in LVM) on the fly, without rebooting!. And if your drive is completely full, just add a new drive and expand your logical volume to include this new disk.

To use LVM2 you will need kernel support for it:

Device Drivers  --->
    Multi-device support (RAID and LVM)  --->
        [*] Multiple devices driver support (RAID and LVM)
	<*>   Device mapper support

I currently use the xfs and ReiserFS filesystems on my logical volumes.

For more information:

Losing data sucks, and some hard drives appear to be more prone to data lose than others. The noise levels of hard drives are also interesting, especially when you are building a Home Theater PC for the living room. The following table lists my experiences with a couple of hard drives.

• (1): Old primary workstation hard drive
• (2): Current primary workstation hard drive
• (3): Current secondary workstation hard drive
• (4): Current primary HTPC hard drive
• (5): Current primary Powerbook Titanium hard drive
• (6): Current primary Powerbook 3400 hard drive

For more information:

Must modern hard drives support S.M.A.R.T (Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology System), which report the health of the drive. And there is and excellent tool available for Linux to do this, and it's called smartmontools.

For more information:

You can use almost the performance tuning option for hdparm as with your hard drive, you should at least enable DMA, so that your DVDs don't skip :)

I currently does not have a CD-R/RW drive installed in any of my computers, but I use an external burner connected via USB.

For instructions on how to burn CDs in Linux please read my CD burning guide.

Probably the most widely used USB storage devices are USB keys/memory sticks, which provide a nice alternative to floppys. But USB storage devices are not limited to this. I have a old 4x speed CD-R/RW drive that I share between my workstation and my Powerbook. It's mounted in an external Qtec 756C USB 2.0 CD/RW 5.25" case. There exists several different types of external device cases, the Qtec uses USB, but there also exist cases that uses Firewire, which makes them ideal for use with Powerbooks.

To utilise an external device case in Linux (containing either a CD-rom, CD-R/RW or hard drive), you first of all need generic USB support or Firewire support. Then the following should be enabled in your kernel:

Device Drivers  --->
    ATA/ATAPI/MFM/RLL support  --->
        <*> ATA/ATAPI/MFM/RLL support
        <*>   Enhanced IDE/MFM/RLL disk/cdrom/tape/floppy support
        <M>     SCSI emulation support
    SCSI device support  --->
        <M> SCSI device support
	<M>   SCSI disk support
	<M>   SCSI CDROM support
	<M>   SCSI generic support
    USB support  --->
        <M>   USB Mass Storage support

Load the modules with:

modprobe usb-storage
modprobe sd_mod
modprobe scsi_mod
modprobe sg
modprobe sr-mod

The devices should appear in /dev as sdaX or sdbX (X is a number) depending on how many other SCSI devices you have in your system. You can mount the device with: mount /dev/sdaX /mnt/usb-storage/ -t vfat or what ever file system the drive is using.
Next you can add this line to your /etc/fstab

/dev/sdaX /mnt/usb-storage/ vfat  noauto,user,quiet,defaults,sync 0 0

The sync option makes sure that data is written directly to the device, and not just buffered.

udev as device manage is a good choice to ensure that your USB device always get the same /dev entry.