Managing disk space with LVM

Now a days, when one installs Linux on ones machine, in more cases than one, there is a trend to create a logical volume and create the file system on this volume rather than creating the file system in individual partitions. I have myself created logical volumes on one of my machines running Linux.

Logical volumes have their own advantages in that one can grow or shrink a volume without any loss of data. And that makes it much more flexible than creating file systems directly in partitions. Another advantage is that one can bundle multiple hard disks together to create a single logical volume such that the operating system sees only one volume even as the data resides across multiple physical hard disks. In a previous post titled "Resizing Logical Volumes", I had briefly put down my experiences in create logical volumes in Fedora Linux.

Now Bryce Harrington and Kees Cook have come together to write this very informative article titled 'Managing Disk Space with LVM' which clearly explains the ins and outs of creating, modifying and deleting logical volumes in Linux which makes an interesting read.

Usually, logical volumes are more desirable where there is a constant flux in the amount of data in storage devices such as a machine running as a file server or a database server and so on. But even home users could benefit from creating logical volumes if they are in the habit of saving lots of data on their hard disk like games, movie clips,songs... and see their disk space shrinking at a fast pace.And if the hard disk fills up, the procedure is as simple as attaching a second hard disk and then extending the logical volume on the first hard disk to include the new one. But if you go the LVM way for your desktop, just make sure that the /boot directory resides in a physical partition of its own instead of the logical volume as boot loaders like GRUB and LILO don't support LVM yet.