From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Tejun Heo Subject: Re: WDC WD20EARS and 4k sector size Date: Tue, 25 Jan 2011 11:01:10 +0100 Message-ID: <20110125100110.GM27510@htj.dyndns.org> References: <20110125030410.GA24024@MAIL.13thfloor.at> <20110125033259.GC24024@MAIL.13thfloor.at> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Return-path: Received: from mail-fx0-f46.google.com ([209.85.161.46]:41798 "EHLO mail-fx0-f46.google.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1752945Ab1AYKBP (ORCPT ); Tue, 25 Jan 2011 05:01:15 -0500 Received: by fxm20 with SMTP id 20so5032933fxm.19 for ; Tue, 25 Jan 2011 02:01:14 -0800 (PST) Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <20110125033259.GC24024@MAIL.13thfloor.at> Sender: linux-ide-owner@vger.kernel.org List-Id: linux-ide@vger.kernel.org To: Herbert Poetzl Cc: "Martin K. Petersen" , linux-ide@vger.kernel.org Hello, On Tue, Jan 25, 2011 at 04:32:59AM +0100, Herbert Poetzl wrote: > > Align your partitions on a 4K boundary. > > While this will ensure that the drive performance is better > than without doing so (I'm not using a partition table on that > drive anyways, but I get what you mean), this doesn't inform > the kernel about proper I/O sizes and for sure doesn't prevent > unnecessary read-change-write operations for the disc ... Kernel doesn't really care. Well, the fs should align things to 4KiB but all the modern ones already do so. The only thing necessary is aligning the partition table. Whether the drive lies about physical sector or not, most modern distros unconditionally align partitions to 1MiB. So, as long as you use a distro which was released in the past six month, there's nothing to worry about. Thanks. -- tejun