While this is true that Linux OS would work fine on the hard disk with only one large volume , but there are several benefits of dividing the hard disk into at least four volumes vis. home, root, swap and usr. The major benefits of partitioning the hard drive are as listed below:
First, it helps you to reduce the time period required to carry out file system checks , because these checks can be performed at the same time. With several partition, it is quite easy to perform checkup.
Second, with many volumes, you can mount one or more of the volumes in read only mode. For example, when you consider that everything in the /home directory would not be touched even by the root, you can mount home in read only mode.
Finally, the most important advantage that hard disk volumes provide is absolute data protection. If anything goes wrong with your Operating system and you've to format the primary volume and then reinstall OS. All of the data stored in secondary volumes would remain safe.
Although, this is quite useful to create several hard disk volumes, but in some situations the volumes might become inaccessible and you may encounter error messages while opening them. As an example, while accessing Linux hard disk volume, you may come across below error which put you in need of Linux data Recovery:
“[ 234.284559] Buffer I/O error on device f 60. Logical block 0
[ 272.376782] Buffer I/O error on device f 60. Logical block 0”
In these cases, Linux recovery Software helps you to recover lost data. These software perform Data Recovery of Linux by thoroughly scanning affected hard drive using advanced scanning mechanisms.



