Chris Murphy composed on 2015-03-16 13:20 (UTC-0600):
Felix Miata wrote:
Chris Murphy composed on 2015-03-15 10:03 (UTC-0600):
so why does this matter?
Because to me backwards compat across many multiboot installations is a plus. I see a size in partition size in inventory, and have a good idea what it means.
None of this changes, the logical sector size is still 512 bytes.
Only when everthing behaves as expected. On which mailing list, Google hit or bug tracker I don't remember, but less than 3 days ago I read about logical vs physical sector size reporting incompatibility among various Linux tools due to interposing a USB case between HD and kernel. Besides thinking it was something Karel Zak wrote, I'm unable to remember enough to find cite. :-(
but why bother? Just align properly. All the tools used these days do this correctly, parted, fdisk, gdisk, and so on.
I don't use "tools". I use one tool. If I want aligned, I get aligned, but it isn't forced upon me as if the only true way.
What tool?
This I've answered publicly many times, but I try not to look like I'm trying to sell it when posting. I only have a license to it, which I renew for each major upgrade. One the reasons I use it exclusively is its great automatic logging, which enables me to easily inventory what I have, and find what I need when I need it for repro and triage on appropriate hardware and software combinations. http://fm.no-ip.com/Tmp/Dfsee/big41L19.txt is the excerpt I have from its most recent logs, used as inventory for the HD that replaced the one instigating this thread. http://fm.no-ip.com/Tmp/Dfsee/dfsL011.txt is a complete unedited log from a fleeting session on a 4k aligned HD.
I don't want to conform to 4k before I know what the nuts & bolts cost of non-conformance is. Maybe I'd be happiest by ignoring alignment in test systems, conforming only in 24/7 systems, if even then.
You are needlessly making a big deal over a long ago solved problem.
On the contrary, the new solution created foreseeable and unforeseeable fallout, as so often happens as development evolves and developers decide backwards compat is too much trouble to keep.
You're confused.
About many things, yes, but you're misinterpreting what I wrote.
The whole point of 512e drives is *expressly* for backwards compatibility. Otherwise the manufacturers would have gone directly to 4Kn drives.
Of course, but like everything people design, it isn't perfect. Compromise, mother of mediocrity, isn't always avoidable.
It's aligned, just not to a 4k multiple. It's aligned to a multiple of 255*63 or 240*63, de facto standards before the HD makers decided everyone needed only huge storage devices, for which 512 byte physical sectors had to dodo.
Your CHS multiples are aligned to nothing at all physically on the drive. It's been a complete abstraction, since at least two major epochs in computing ago.
4k, like 512, is also an abstraction. Even though the bytes are advertised as, and universally considered to be discrete bits, on or off with no state in between, the recording surfaces at the foundational level are analog, a discovery I made only a week or so ago. Chris Murphy composed on 2015-03-16 13:28 (UTC-0600):
Felix Miata wrote:
Per Jessen composed on 2015-03-16 16:00 (UTC+0100):
Anton Aylward wrote:
I suppose all late model disks are 4K :-)
Probably the larger ones, but I have a bunch of 2Tb drives, they're all 512bytes.
If the actual date of manufacture (often missing from labels of refurbs) is post-2010, it is almost certainly 4k, regardless of size. The only 2TB devices I have were manufactured before 2011. IOW, Anton was on track, everything made in the past 4+ years is 4k.
HGST lists the Ultrastar 7K4000's as a 2013 product. They come in 512n versions up to 4TB. http://www.hgst.com/tech/techlib.nsf/techdocs/FD3F376DC2ECCE68882579D40082C3... http://www.hgst.com/tech/techlib.nsf/techdocs/9E4E119077AD1D8B86256DD0005A2F...
I got snowed on this subject. The very existence of "512n" as a label is news to me as of this thread. How it was enabled: 1-I repeatedly misread http://www.seagate.com/tech-insights/advanced-format-4k-sector-hard-drives-m... confusing the stated 2011 start date agreed to by all HD makers with a full implementation date. 2-Googling 'site:seagate.com 512n sector' for me produced no hits on seagate.com that I opened that actually included the string "512n". 3-(IIRC) I must never have looked other than 1 & 2 for coverage of the subject. That happened as a result of avoiding WD products, and the WD web site, and a mistaken understanding of the relationship between WD and and HGST just resolved in recent hours, leading me to never search the HGST site either. Last new HGST product I purchased was around its first year after it broke ties to IBM. 4-Searching vendor sites when in need of product, missing any mention of the existence of "512n", frustrated by the preponderance of "AF" and "Advanced Format" on product pages. 5-Errant personal assumptions WRT HD production capacity reduction and consequent restoration following 311 earthquake. My previous thread post is a good example of why mailing list replies belong on list by default[1]. People asking the list for help deserve the auditing that private replies rather well block. [1] http://marc.merlins.org/netrants/reply-to-useful.html -- "The wise are known for their understanding, and pleasant words are persuasive." Proverbs 16:21 (New Living Translation) Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 ** a11y rocks! Felix Miata *** http://fm.no-ip.com/ -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org