[lug] mkfs and large drives?

[Anders Knudsen]

At 04:20 PM 7/25/2002 -0600, Jeff wrote:
> > Or are there any tweeks anyone can suggest to make the best possible
> > useage for this large of a partition?
>
>I'd suggest dropping the number of reserved blocks.  By default, I think
>mkfs saves 5% of the blocks for the super-user, but those are rarely
>used and on a 120GB partition that means 6GB wasted.
>
>Use the -m option, followed by the percentage you'd like to reserve
>(say, 1%):
>
># mkfs.ext3 -v -m 1 -T largefile4 /dev/hdc1

Great suggestion.
Forgive my ignorance, but what are the "super-user blocks" used for on a drive?

thanks,
-anders.