Re: What are the correct mkfs.xfs parameters for a lying WD-EARS HDD?

From: Gim Leong Chin <chingimleong@yahoo.com.sg>
To: Eric Sandeen <sandeen@sandeen.net>, Matthias Schniedermeyer <ms@citd.de>
Cc: xfs@oss.sgi.com
Subject: Re: What are the correct mkfs.xfs parameters for a lying WD-EARS HDD?
Date: Wed, 10 Mar 2010 16:26:58 +0800 (SGT)	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <286793.30706.qm@web76211.mail.sg1.yahoo.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <20100309214131.GA30233@citd.de>

Hi,

You can use GPT fdisk (gdisk) to do the partitioning.  The author had the exact same problem with the performance of WD 4 kB sector drives.  The tool automatically sets the partition start and end at 4 kB boundaries.  You can in fact set the partition start and end at any sector you want.

It is the firmware in the WD drives that translates the physical 4 kB sector to 512 byte sectors.

GL

--- On Wed, 10/3/10, Matthias Schniedermeyer <ms@citd.de> wrote:

> From: Matthias Schniedermeyer <ms@citd.de>
> Subject: Re: What are the correct mkfs.xfs parameters for a lying WD-EARS HDD?
> To: "Eric Sandeen" <sandeen@sandeen.net>
> Cc: xfs@oss.sgi.com
> Date: Wednesday, 10 March, 2010, 5:41 AM
> On 09.03.2010 00:47, Matthias
> Schniedermeyer wrote:
> > On 08.03.2010 16:45, Eric Sandeen wrote:
> > > Matthias Schniedermeyer wrote:
> > > > Hi
> > > > 
> > > > 
> > > > More than a month ago i bought 4 Western
> Digital WD15EARS (1.5 TB) which 
> > > > are (AFAIK) the first general/commercial
> available 4k sector SATA-HDDs.
> > > > 
> > > > Unfortunatly the HDDs lie about the 4k
> physical sector size and the most 
> > > > prominent drawback is a worse than abysmal
> delete performance.
> > > > ("Normal" Read & Write-performance is
> OK)
> > > > 
> > > > So if i wanted to (re-)mkfs the filesystems
> what would the correct 
> > > > parameters be?
> > > 
> > > once that is done, tell mkfs.xfs "-s size=4096"
> to set the 4k sector size
> > 
> > So that should be enough?
> > Time for backup/mkfs/restore then.
> 
> backup/mkfs/restore is finished.
> 
> I'm currently testing delete-performance.
> And it improved to abysmal performance. (As expected)
> 
> Read-latency, while deleting, has also improved
> drastically. Before the 
> FS was near unusable while deleting. But that is also to be
> expected 
> from such a HDD when it is doing RMW like there is no
> tomorrow. ;-)
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Bis denn
> 
> -- 
> Real Programmers consider "what you see is what you get" to
> be just as 
> bad a concept in Text Editors as it is in women. No, the
> Real Programmer
> wants a "you asked for it, you got it" text editor --
> complicated, 
> cryptic, powerful, unforgiving, dangerous.
> 
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