From owner-freebsd-current@FreeBSD.ORG Thu Dec 31 16:13:37 2009 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-current@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 74632106568B; Thu, 31 Dec 2009 16:13:37 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from pieter@degoeje.nl) Received: from mx.utwente.nl (mx1.utsp.utwente.nl [130.89.2.12]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id E95618FC1E; Thu, 31 Dec 2009 16:13:36 +0000 (UTC) Received: from nox.student.utwente.nl (nox.student.utwente.nl [130.89.165.91]) by mx.utwente.nl (8.12.10/SuSE Linux 0.7) with ESMTP id nBVGCIpo025776; Thu, 31 Dec 2009 17:12:18 +0100 From: Pieter de Goeje To: freebsd-current@freebsd.org Date: Thu, 31 Dec 2009 17:12:17 +0100 User-Agent: KMail/1.9.10 References: <4B349ABF.2070800@FreeBSD.org> <4B38A4DE.2040507@FreeBSD.org> <200912281741.27179.pieter@degoeje.nl> In-Reply-To: <200912281741.27179.pieter@degoeje.nl> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="windows-1252" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Content-Disposition: inline Message-Id: <200912311712.18347.pieter@degoeje.nl> X-UTwente-MailScanner-Information: Scanned by MailScanner. Contact icts.servicedesk@utwente.nl for more information. X-UTwente-MailScanner: Found to be clean X-UTwente-MailScanner-From: pieter@degoeje.nl X-Spam-Status: No Cc: Alexander Motin , Miroslav Lachman <000.fbsd@quip.cz>, Thomas Backman , freebsd-arch@freebsd.org Subject: Re: File system blocks alignment X-BeenThere: freebsd-current@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Discussions about the use of FreeBSD-current List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Thu, 31 Dec 2009 16:13:37 -0000 On Monday 28 December 2009 17:41:26 Pieter de Goeje wrote: > On Monday 28 December 2009 13:30:22 Alexander Motin wrote: > > Miroslav Lachman wrote: > > > Alexander Motin wrote: > > >> Thomas Backman wrote: > > >>> On Dec 25, 2009, at 11:58 AM, Alexander Motin wrote: > > >> |>> Recently WD released first series of ATA disks with increased > > >> > > >> physical > > >> > > >>>> sector size. It makes writes not matching with 4K blocks inefficie= nt > > >>>> there. > > >>> > > >>> They don't expose this to the OS, though (not by default, anyway), > > >>> but chop it up into 8 512-byte sectors for compatibility reasons. > > >>> Just thought I'd point that out - I'm not even sure if you can get > > >>> them to *not* do the compatibility thing and expose 4k-sized sector= s. > > >> > > >> Latest ATA-8 specification allows drive to report both logical (512B) > > >> and physical (4KB) sector sizes. ada driver able to fetch and report > > >> that info to GEOM. If these drives not reporting it yet (are you > > >> really sure?), it is only question of their firmware. > > > > > > There is an article about 4k sectors > > > http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=3D3691 > > > > > > It is completely hidden to OS in first versions. > > > > Thanks for the link, but all I see there is "but at this point there=92s > > no such tool". IMHO it doesn't meet it is not reported. > > > > We just need somebody with that drive to run on it `camcontrol identify` > > from the fresh system and report what he sees. > > I've just ordered one of these disks. I expect it to arrive in a couple of > days. Will let you know what it says when I have it :) Ok, as Miroslav wrote, it does not report 4k sectors: # camcontrol identify ada0 pass0: ATA-8 SATA 2.x device pass0: 300.000MB/s transfers (SATA 2.x, UDMA6, PIO size 8192bytes) protocol ATA/ATAPI-8 SATA 2.x device model WDC WD10EARS-00Y5B1 firmware revision 80.00A80 serial number WD-WCAV55072095 WWN 50014ee2ae6664fd cylinders 16383 heads 16 sectors/track 63 sector size logical 512, physical 512, offset 0 LBA supported 268435455 sectors LBA48 supported 1953525168 sectors PIO supported PIO4 DMA supported WDMA2 UDMA6 overlap not supported =46eature Support Enable Value Vendor read ahead yes yes write cache yes yes flush cache yes yes Native Command Queuing (NCQ) yes 31/0x1F Tagged Command Queuing (TCQ) no no 31/0x1F SMART yes yes microcode download yes yes security yes no power management yes yes advanced power management no no 0/0x00 automatic acoustic management yes no 254/0xFE 128/0x80 media status notification no no power-up in Standby yes no write-read-verify no no 0/0x0 unload no no free-fall no no According to the anandtech article, this is because Windows XP does not wor= k=20 with sectorsize !=3D 512 bytes. =2D Pieter