I'm doing some shuffling of some systems, and I've got a question.
I know *HOW* to partition drives, but frankly I'm finding partitions
to be more of an asset than a liability.

The reasons I have so far that justify creating a partition are:

1	Boot partitions (multiple OSs, or in the case of Alpha, some
	need to see a FAT partition with certain BIOS/bootloader
	combinations.

2	Need for multiple fs.  If you *need* a disk of fs <x>, sure.

3	Simple "hardware quotas".

I see no reason to divide the drive otherwise.  If you want to have
multiple disks, you can hang them from any mountpoint in that file
system.  If one of multiple disks goes down, you can remount/restore
to the same point, whether the drive in question has been partitioned
or not.  But if a partitioned drive fails totally, all the partitions
fail.

It has *not* been my experience that drives fail in such a way as to
render some of them useful, but not others.  (Not that it can't
happen, but bad bearings affect all partitions equally.)

Not from *nix, but I know VMS has had logical volume capability since
forever, and RMS filesystems are *not* partitioned.  Does the LVM use
partitioned drives (I'm reading web stuff as I ask...) or do they
spend a lot of energy trying to integrate partitions back into raw
drive space so that they can control the fs structure?

I just wanted to hear a little discussion on this, 'cause I think I'm
close to developing an opinion that partitioning is silly.

Thx,
Phil

-- 
"Trying to do something with your life is like
sitting down to eat a moose." --Douglas Wood