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For an example, what are the advantages (or optionally disadvantages) of creating a Linux file-system (ext3 or ext4) directly on hard drive (i.e mkfs.ext3 /dev/sdb) rather than making it on a partition.

When I implemented ext3 file-system directly on my second hard drive, every thing seems to be working as usual, it can be mounted with mount command and also via /etc/fstab on boot time. I did not notice any performance issue either. The only thing I notice was fdisk -l is returning "Disk /dev/sdb doesn't contain a valid partition table". Apart from that the setup (tried in VMWare) worked quite well.

Therefore, can someone tell me which is better? Is there any benefits (or drawbacks) when creating a file-system directly on hard-disk? What are your ideas?

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at least other operating systems (and even other linux installations) will most likely not recognize the partiton as there is no information on the filesystem stored on the hard drive.When using a partition table this information is stored in the first sector of the hard drive. I recommend to always create a partition even if you only need one on the drive. – Michael K Jan 6 '12 at 10:31
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This has been answered on unix.stackexchange.com. – htorque Jan 6 '12 at 10:37

closed as off topic by htorque, enzotib, Takkat, fossfreedom♦, RolandiXor♦ Jan 10 '12 at 1:47

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