From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Mon Nov 26 21:13:18 2012 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [69.147.83.52]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id ACEB419D for ; Mon, 26 Nov 2012 21:13:18 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from rfg@tristatelogic.com) Received: from outgoing.tristatelogic.com (segfault.tristatelogic.com [69.62.255.118]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 7FE4D8FC08 for ; Mon, 26 Nov 2012 21:13:18 +0000 (UTC) Received: from segfault-nmh-helo.tristatelogic.com (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by segfault.tristatelogic.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id D348C5081A for ; Mon, 26 Nov 2012 13:13:10 -0800 (PST) To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Advanced Format Drive ? Date: Mon, 26 Nov 2012 13:13:10 -0800 Message-ID: <15893.1353964390@tristatelogic.com> From: "Ronald F. Guilmette" X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.14 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Mon, 26 Nov 2012 21:13:19 -0000 Just a brief follow-up on my questions here (about 2 weeks ago) regarding so-called "Advanced Format" (4KB block) drives... I just got myself a shiny new Seagate 2.5" portable external 1TB hard drive. fdisk is telling me this about it: =========================================================================== ******* Working on device /dev/da1 ******* parameters extracted from in-core disklabel are: cylinders=121601 heads=255 sectors/track=63 (16065 blks/cyl) Figures below won't work with BIOS for partitions not in cyl 1 parameters to be used for BIOS calculations are: cylinders=121601 heads=255 sectors/track=63 (16065 blks/cyl) Media sector size is 512 Warning: BIOS sector numbering starts with sector 1 Information from DOS bootblock is: The data for partition 1 is: sysid 7 (0x07),(NTFS, OS/2 HPFS, QNX-2 (16 bit) or Advanced UNIX) start 2048, size 1953519616 (953867 Meg), flag 0 beg: cyl 0/ head 32/ sector 33; end: cyl 1023/ head 254/ sector 63 The data for partition 2 is: The data for partition 3 is: The data for partition 4 is: =========================================================================== Starting sector 2048 is definitely a multiple of 4KB, so I am assuming that all I really need to do here in order to use this new drive as extra stroage for a FreeBSD system (assuming that I am happy with good old fashioned MBR style partitioning, which I am) is just: newfs -U /dev/da1s1 Right? Last question: How could I even tell if this thing is or isn't "Advanced Format"? Is there some tool I could run that would tell me that?