[coLinux-devel] Real Paritition vs Image

[Pelux <pe...@ng...>]

I have made some tests to decide if it is better to have a real ext3 
partition or an image of it on a ntfs partition.
Both the image and the partition have these settings:
exte3, journal 128mb, dir_index, journal_data (full journaling as i read 
that it improves performances in some situations (like portage)).
Using stage 3 gentoo 2005.1 made from scratch.
The real partition is of 10Gb, the image partition of 2Gb
Using hdparm -tT /dev/cobd0 i get
1) cached reads: around 400Mb/sec for both the image, the real partition 
under colinux, the real partition under knoppix
2) buffered reads differs: around:
12Mb/sec for colinux - real partition (stable result)
21Mb/sec for knoppix - real partition (stable result)
13 20 25 27 27 29 Mb/sec for colinux - image on ntfs (not stable! 
results improve till i get to the 30 Mb/sec and then stops)
Timing portage sync anyway gives not too different results.
What are your experience? Does one solution outperforms the other one? 
Is one solutions more secure (in terms of data not being corrupted) ?
Thank you

Greetings
Pelux