From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Theodore Tso Subject: Re: tools support for non-512 byte sector sizes Date: Wed, 30 Jul 2008 14:13:52 -0400 Message-ID: <20080730181351.GA5347@mit.edu> References: <488F524F.6020905@redhat.com> <20080729182611.GB24924@parisc-linux.org> <1217356645.6103.48.camel@localhost.localdomain> <20080730135147.GA4513@auslistsprd01.us.dell.com> <87zlnzb8ce.fsf@rho.meyering.net> <20080730172922.GA20191@auslistsprd01.us.dell.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Return-path: Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <20080730172922.GA20191@auslistsprd01.us.dell.com> Sender: linux-scsi-owner@vger.kernel.org To: Matt Domsch Cc: Jim Meyering , "Martin K. Petersen" , James Bottomley , Matthew Wilcox , Ric Wheeler , linux-scsi@vger.kernel.org, linux-ide@vger.kernel.org, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, Jeff Garzik List-Id: linux-ide@vger.kernel.org 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