Re: tools support for non-512 byte sector sizes

[Theodore Tso <tytso@mit.edu>]

On Wed, Jul 30, 2008 at 12:29:22PM -0500, Matt Domsch wrote:
> 2) those that report a 512-byte sector size, but are really a
>    4096-byte size, and the drive does the conversions and
>    read/modify/write.  T10 and T13 are looking to add commands to
>    expose this different underlying physical sector size so the OS
>    could be aware of it.  This is primarily being driven to mitigate
>    any problems that may happen with "legacy" OSs that are not aware
>    of the difference.

As usual, the biggest problem will be "legacy" userspace.  For
example, most partition tools are still generating legacy partition
tables that look like this:

Disk /dev/sda: 255 heads, 63 sectors, 38913 cylinders

Nr AF  Hd Sec  Cyl  Hd Sec  Cyl     Start      Size ID
 1 80   1   1    0 254  63  121         63    1959867 83
 2 00   0   1  122 254  63  619    1959930    8000370 82
 3 00   0   1  620 254  63 1023    9960300  615177045 05
 4 00   0   0    0   0   0    0          0          0 00
 5 00   1   1  620 254  63 1023         63  615176982 8e

Note the starting sector# for the first partition.....

						- Ted