View source for How should I format additional hard drives?

[[Category: Tutorials]]
From "blog gelusi: Linux Tuning Guide" (http://gelusi.blogspot.com/2008/02/linux-tuning-guide.html)

  1. Filesystem
  Block sizes
  
  For filesystems dedicated to serving fairly large files, adopting a larger than default 1024 byte block size may yield significant
  performance gains.
  
  Recent transactions on the linux kernel list suggest that setting the block sizein an ext2 file system to 4096 instead of the 
  default 1024 will result in less file fragmentation, faster fsck's, faster deletes and faster raw read speed, due to the reduced 
  number of seeks.
  
  Unfortunately this cannot be changed on the fly. Only a reformat will make this so. The command to format a file system with 4096 
  byte blocks is:
  
  mke2fs -b 4096 /dev/whatever
  
  Additionally, on any filesystems except those used for logfiles, the default of 5% reserved for root use is excessive for large 
  file systems, so the command to make the filesystem can be augmented to
  
  mke2fs -b 4096 -m 1 /dev/whatever
  
  to set the reserved fraction to 1 percent.

Note, no further configuration should be necessary as new drives will be auto-discovered.