Re: 4k sector drives

[Khelben Blackstaff <eye.of.the.8eholder@gmail.com>]

> I have these:
> Model=WDC WD20EARS-00MVWB0, FwRev=50.0AB50, SerialNo=WD-WMAZ20035646
> Model=WDC WD20EARS-00MVWB0, FwRev=50.0AB50, SerialNo=WD-WMAZ20028252

> Any chance to get Linux know they are 4k sector drives manually?

Your revision numbers are different than mine, because you have the 2TB drive,
but i guess its the same for these too. You can try "hdparm -I /dev/sdX" (capital i)
or "cat /sys/block/sdX/queue/hw_sector_size" to see what they report.

Mine report "Logical/Physical Sector size:           512 bytes"
There are newer revisions that report "Physical Sector size: 4096 bytes"

Nevertheless, you don't have to get them to report 4k to linux. As long as you
align the partitions its fine. As i said in the other post, newer fdisk doesn't use
"DOS compatibility mode" and uses sectors by default (instead of stupid CHS)
with a 1MB alignment, so every partition will be properly aligned. If you don't
dual boot Windows, you can also use GPT partitioning scheme.
Also, from what i have seen, xfsprogs are quite clever and find most stuff on
their own. I usually mkfs with "-s size=4096" just to be sure.

Slightly offtopic, there is another "problem" with these drives. They park the heads
every 8 seconds, so they _might_ wear prematurely. You can change the 8sec timer
or disable it with the wdidle3 utility from this url
http://support.wdc.com/product/download.asp?groupid=609&sid=113&lang=en

If you want to know more about the problem, there are many forums where
you can read about wdidle3 and i also posted about it on my blog.
http://lordkhelben.wordpress.com/2010/05/15/wd-caviar-green-hard-disks-idle-settings/

I hope i helped.

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