From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Thu Nov 15 05:50:32 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 580FABCB for ; Thu, 15 Nov 2012 05:50:32 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from wblock@wonkity.com) Received: from wonkity.com (wonkity.com [67.158.26.137]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id EBD308FC1D for ; Thu, 15 Nov 2012 05:50:31 +0000 (UTC) Received: from wonkity.com (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by wonkity.com (8.14.5/8.14.5) with ESMTP id qAF5oU6m058683; Wed, 14 Nov 2012 22:50:30 -0700 (MST) (envelope-from wblock@wonkity.com) Received: from localhost (wblock@localhost) by wonkity.com (8.14.5/8.14.5/Submit) with ESMTP id qAF5oUxX058680; Wed, 14 Nov 2012 22:50:30 -0700 (MST) (envelope-from wblock@wonkity.com) Date: Wed, 14 Nov 2012 22:50:30 -0700 (MST) From: Warren Block To: "Ronald F. Guilmette" Subject: Re: Advanced Format Drive ? In-Reply-To: <17388.1352953630@tristatelogic.com> Message-ID: References: <17388.1352953630@tristatelogic.com> User-Agent: Alpine 2.00 (BSF 1167 2008-08-23) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed X-Greylist: Sender IP whitelisted, not delayed by milter-greylist-4.2.7 (wonkity.com [127.0.0.1]); Wed, 14 Nov 2012 22:50:30 -0700 (MST) Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org 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: Thu, 15 Nov 2012 05:50:32 -0000 On Wed, 14 Nov 2012, Ronald F. Guilmette wrote: > (And I gather from everything that has been said > so far in this thread that if the alignment is set wrong, then the user > is likely to pay a Big Price in terms of performance, right?) Yes. > ... and I am almost tempted to file a formal PR about this, i.e. the fact > that ``guided'' partitioning doesn't allow the user to specify the alignment > of _anything_. There are a couple PRs like that already. >>> Or do I need to set the alignment separately, e.g. my manually running >>> bsdlabel? (Normally, I've just been using what noadays is being >>> called "guided" partitioning, you know, with the friendly curses-based >>> GUI. So As with fdisk, I have no real experience using bsdlabee from >>> teh command line. But I guess it is time that i learned how.) >> >> I don't know of a way to make fdisk and bsdlabel do the correct >> alignment. > > That also is rather entirely perplexing to me, especially given all else > that I have learned already from and within this conversation. fdisk and bsdlabel are old tools. Disks have had 512-byte blocks for a very long time. > For example, I've learned that when one is using modern "Advanced > Format) (4KB blocksize) hard disks, it is Bad (capital `B') to allow > any partition to be aligned to anything other than (at least) a 4KB > boundary, _and_ that newfs has already, apparently been modified/updated > so that it's minimum default fragment size is 4KB. The larger size was an option to newfs, the defaults have just been changed. > Given these facts, I am more than a little surpised to learn (or rather > just to realize) that the good old traditional fdisk and bsdlabel tools > do not have ways to explicitly specify minimum alignment _and_ that > these tools are still being distributed with FreeBSD. There may be a way, I haven't bothered to look. As I said, gpart does everything fdisk and bsdlabel can do.