Question

Differences Between Linux and Windows Operating Systems Two key differences between a Linux operating system and a Windows operating system are the concepts of “mounting” and “drive” letters. Provide an example for each. Why is it important to plan disk partitioning before installing Linux? Discuss the advantages of disk partitioning. Also discuss what logical volume management (LVM) is and why or why you might use it.

Answer 1

Here is the perfect answer for your question:

Concepts of “Mounting”

Unix systems have a single directory tree. All accessible storage must have an associated location in this single directory tree.Mounting is the act of associating a storage device to a particular location in the directory tree.

For example, when the system boots, a particular storage device (commonly called the root partition) is associated with the root of the directory tree, i.e., that storage device is mounted on / (the root directory).

Let's say you now want to access files on a CD-ROM. You must mount the CD-ROM on a location in the directory tree (this may be done automatically when you insert the CD). Let's say the CD-ROM device is /dev/cdrom and the chosen mount point is /media/cdrom. The corresponding command is

mount /dev/cdrom /media/cdrom

After that command is run, suppose you want to access a folder named Packages in the cdrom, then it will be now accessible on your system as /media/cdrom/Packages/

When you've finished using the CD, you run the command

umount /dev/cdrom

or

umount /media/cdrom

(both will work; typical desktop environments will do this when you click on the “eject” or ”safely remove” button).

Concepts of “Drive Letter”

In the Windows world, drives can be identified by their names (such as "Windows7_OS") and their drive letters (such as "C:"). The important thing to remember is that Windows really only cares about the drive letter. That has to be unique; you can't have two drives labeled E: on the same computer.

The drive letter plays an important role in telling Windows where to look. A file in C:\Users probably isn't also in D:\Users.

By default, in Windows (and in DOS before it), the boot drive is C:.
Other drives, whether they're internal, external, optical, or additional partitions, get other letters, usually in the order they were assigned: D:, E:, and so on.

Example:

Here the widows operating system is installed on Drive letter : C and we have another drive also with letter as D.

Advantages of disk partitioning

There are several advantages of having partitions on your hard drive.

Faster disk access:

Careful planning might yield you a faster speed. You will be able create different file system types that best suits the type of files that you will store in that particular disk partition. Smaller or an optimum sized partition will increase lookup times in the address tables by keeping the size of the tables lower.

Isolating Data Corruption:

It is possible for the sectors on the drive to go bad. It is also possible for a rogue or experimental software to corrupt data. In such cases, partitions help by isolating the data corruption to a limited scale.

Separate area for swap/paging:

Usually the swap size uses a different file system type will need to be in a separate partition by itself.

Logical separation of data:

This allows you to keep different file types separate. The system files can be maintained separately from the user files. Even within the user files, you could keep the media files separated from the software specific files or text files. Even though the backup files should be kept on a separate disk altogether, it can be kept in a different partition if a secondary drive is not available.

Ease of use :

Make it easier to recover a corrupted file system or operating system installation.

Performance :

Smaller file systems are more efficient. You can tune file system as per application such as log or cache files. Dedicated swap partition can also improve the performance.

Security :

Separation of the operating system files from user files may result into a better and secure system. Restrict the growth of certain file systems is possible using various techniques.

Backup and Recovery :

Easier backup and recovery.

Stability and efficiency :

You can increase disk space efficiency by formatting disk with various block sizes. It depends upon usage. For example, if the data is lots of small files, it is better to use small block size.

Testing :

Boot multiple operating systems such as Linux, Windows and FreeBSD from a single hard disk.

Logical Volume Management

Logical Volume Manager allows for a layer of abstraction between your operating system and the disks/partitions it uses. In traditional disk management your operating system looks for what disks are available (/dev/sda, /dev/sdb, etc.) and then looks at what partitions are available on those disks (/dev/sda1, /dev/sda2, etc.).

With LVM, disks and partitions can be abstracted to contain multiple disks and partitions into one device. Your operating systems will never know the difference because LVM will only show the OS the volume groups (disks) and logical volumes (partitions) that you have set up.

Because volume groups and logical volumes aren’t physically tied to a hard drive, it makes it easy to dynamically resize and create new disks and partitions.

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