From: David Brown <david@westcontrol.com>
To: linux-raid@vger.kernel.org
Subject: Re: HBA Adaptor advice
Date: Mon, 23 May 2011 13:35:58 +0200 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <irdgqh$47n$1@dough.gmane.org> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <4DDA3A00.8010904@hardwarefreak.com>
On 23/05/2011 12:42, Stan Hoeppner wrote:
> On 5/23/2011 12:54 AM, Brad Campbell wrote:
>
>> Most sane operating systems use cluster sizes of 4k or larger and have
>> done for years, so I really don't see what all the fuss is about.
>>
>> Peoples inability to properly align the data on their disks can be read
>> either as a failing in the technology (the partitioning applications
>> have not caught up yet) or simply a lack of understanding on how to
>> apply the technology.
>>
>> Don't blame the drive manufacturers, this should have happened _years_ ago.
>
> I don't think anyone has an issue w/native 4KB sectors and operating
> system support for it. That would have been the big win. What folks
> have issue with is the hybrid 512/4096 drives which has created the
> alignment offset problems.
>
> The industry (BIOS/firmware), commercial and FOSS OSes, should have
> worked together to migrate directly to 4KB native sectors. I don't know
> why this didn't happen, usual suspects I guess. It seems, from my
> limited POV, that the Linux partition tool people and kernel folks
> simply don't care at this point.
>
The problem is Windows XP - neither more nor less. XP only supports 512
byte sectors, and the installed base is so large that manufacturers
can't ignore it. Linux has been happy with 4K sectors for many years -
the problem only came when WD produced disks that had 4K sectors but
claimed to be 512, so that they could work with XP.
The worst case is hybrid disks that offset the sector number, so that
512-byte "sector" number 63 is at the beginning of a 4K native sector.
The idea is that these will be fast with XP and other systems that have
the first partition starting at sector 63 - but it screws up everything
else.
> I've not paid recent attention. Have fdisk, cfdisk, parted, etc, all
> come up to speed now, and automatically handle offsets correctly for
> hybrid sector size disks?
>
Modern versions should automatically align partitions appropriately.
Typically you use 1 MB boundaries - that works well with all sorts of
disks (SSDs prefer alignment of perhaps 64K or 128K for erase blocks),
and should work well for future disks.
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2011-05-23 11:35 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 60+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2011-05-19 12:26 HBA Adaptor advice Ed W
2011-05-19 12:36 ` Roman Mamedov
2011-05-19 12:43 ` Mathias Burén
2011-05-19 14:06 ` Michael Sallaway
2011-05-19 19:10 ` Thomas Harold
2011-05-19 21:12 ` Rudy Zijlstra
2011-05-19 21:07 ` Brad Campbell
2011-05-20 20:58 ` Tobias McNulty
2011-05-20 21:23 ` Brad Campbell
2011-05-20 2:08 ` Andy Smith
2011-05-20 5:30 ` Stan Hoeppner
2011-05-21 9:52 ` Ed W
2011-05-20 7:33 ` Ed W
2011-05-20 10:21 ` Stan Hoeppner
2011-05-21 11:17 ` Ed W
2011-05-21 11:29 ` Rudy Zijlstra
2011-05-21 11:54 ` Ed W
2011-05-21 17:37 ` Leslie Rhorer
2011-05-22 9:41 ` Stan Hoeppner
2011-05-22 10:03 ` Rudy Zijlstra
2011-05-23 9:32 ` Ed W
2011-05-21 17:05 ` Leslie Rhorer
2011-05-22 9:04 ` Stan Hoeppner
2011-05-22 10:09 ` Brad Campbell
2011-05-22 19:25 ` Stan Hoeppner
2011-05-22 20:57 ` Tobias McNulty
2011-05-22 21:13 ` Johannes Truschnigg
2011-05-23 9:48 ` Ed W
2011-05-23 10:44 ` John Robinson
2011-05-22 23:19 ` Brad Campbell
2011-05-23 4:09 ` Roman Mamedov
2011-05-23 5:54 ` Brad Campbell
2011-05-23 6:08 ` Roman Mamedov
2011-05-23 10:42 ` Stan Hoeppner
2011-05-23 11:35 ` David Brown [this message]
2011-05-23 6:54 ` Stan Hoeppner
2011-05-23 7:23 ` Brad Campbell
2011-05-22 23:44 ` Brad Campbell
2011-05-23 0:07 ` Brad Campbell
2011-05-23 5:30 ` Stefan /*St0fF*/ Hübner
2011-05-23 10:18 ` Ed W
2011-05-23 9:58 ` Stan Hoeppner
2011-05-23 10:33 ` Ed W
2011-05-23 11:21 ` Stan Hoeppner
2011-05-20 12:18 ` Joe Landman
2011-05-20 12:34 ` Roman Mamedov
2011-05-20 12:36 ` Mathias Burén
2011-05-20 12:48 ` Joe Landman
2011-05-20 13:21 ` Ed W
2011-05-20 14:23 ` Joe Landman
2011-05-20 20:01 ` Andy Smith
2011-05-20 20:12 ` Stan Hoeppner
2011-05-20 20:24 ` Drew
2011-05-20 20:58 ` Stan Hoeppner
[not found] ` <4DD7A100.2010807@wildgooses.com>
2011-05-22 8:13 ` Stan Hoeppner
-- strict thread matches above, loose matches on Subject: below --
2011-05-23 2:11 Jim Schatzman
2011-05-23 3:39 ` Tobias McNulty
2011-05-23 10:42 ` Ed W
2011-05-23 11:14 HBA Adaptor Advice Ed W
2011-05-23 11:55 ` Joe Landman
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