Re: [gentoo-user] 1-Terabyte drives - 4K sector sizes? -> bar performance so far

[J. Roeleveld]

On Tuesday 09 February 2010 19:25:00 Mark Knecht wrote:
> On Tue, Feb 9, 2010 at 9:38 AM, Stroller <stroller@××××××××××××××××××.uk>
>  wrote: <SNIP>
>
> > IMO this is a fdisk "bug". A feature should be added so that it tries to
> > align optimally in most circumstances. RAID controllers should not be
> > trying to do anything clever to accommodate potential misalignment unless
> > it is really cheap to do so.
> >
> > Stroller.
>
> We think alike. I personally wouldn't call it a bug because drives
> with 4K physical sectors are very new, but adding a feature to align
> things better is dead on the right thing to do. It's silly to expect
> every Linux user installing binary distros to have to learn this stuff
> to get good performance.
>
> - Mark
>

I actually agree, although I think the 'best' solution (untill someone comes 
up with an even better one, that is :) ) would be for the drive to actually be 
able to inform the OS (via S.M.A.R.T.?) that it has 4KB sectors.
If then fdisk-programs and RAID-cards (ok, new firmware) then uses this to 
come to sensible settings, that would then work.

If these RAID-cards then also pass on the correct settings for the raid-array 
for optimal performance (stripe-size => sector-size?) using the same method, 
then everyone would end up with better performance.

Now, if anyone has any idea on how to get this idea implemented by the 
hardware vendors, then I'm quite certain the different tools can be modified 
to take this information into account?

And Mark, it's not just people installing binary distros, I think it's 
generally people who don't fully understand the way harddrives work on a 
physical level. I consider myself lucky to have worked with older computers 
where this information was actually necessary to even get the BIOS to 
recognize the harddrive.

--
Joost