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I've been committed to learning about Linux for the past few months & its been fun! My main problem is understanding certain concepts, due to the fact that this is my first time seeing all this information and I lack hands on experience in a enterprise environment.

My main Question is : Why do we create a filesystem on a partition of a disk, rather than the disk itself. Now, what we have multiple partitions, do they all need to have filesystems?

I understand how to add disks, and create partitions via CLI. Just trying to understand the concept! Thanks !!

AdminNiqo
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  • Uses of single-partition disk configuration. – Kamil Maciorowski Jun 28 '22 at 18:50
  • A few reasons to use multiple partitions. If /home is separated then the system can be rebuilt from scratch without losing your files as long as you don't re-format /home. Keeping /tmp and /var/log (among others) separate will keep your system from grinding to a halt if those directories fill up. Yes - each partition will need to have a file system created but that is a once-and-done at system setup. For the most flexible configuration, you should look into LVM partitioning. – doneal24 Jun 28 '22 at 19:07
  • yes, you need a filesystem on each partition. Why do you need a filesystem? see this: https://superuser.com/questions/932856/what-exactly-is-a-linux-filesystem/932875#932875 – Frank Thomas Jun 28 '22 at 19:24

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When using legacy BIOS booting you actually can do just about anything, partitions, no partitions, anything goes—as long as the boot sector is executable.

For UEFI, you need a separate EFI System Partition (ESP), on which you'll put the EFI executable (boot manager, bootloader, whatever) that you want to start. The firmware must be able to read this partition, which usually means it has to be FAT32.

Some operating systems require more partitions for recovery systems and whatnot. They may also require specific filesystems like NTFS.

Partitions make it possible to meet all these requirements on a single drive: FAT32 ESP, NTFS system partition, recovery partition.

Furthermore, partitions enable you (the user) to cleanly reinstall the system while keeping your personal data, by putting it on a different partition.

Of course, that's not all you can do!

Daniel B
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