From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: from pigeon.gentoo.org ([208.92.234.80] helo=lists.gentoo.org) by finch.gentoo.org with esmtp (Exim 4.60) (envelope-from ) id 1NeJAC-0007sG-NK for garchives@archives.gentoo.org; Mon, 08 Feb 2010 02:15:49 +0000 Received: from pigeon.gentoo.org (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by pigeon.gentoo.org (Postfix) with SMTP id 5162FE0B0C for ; Mon, 8 Feb 2010 02:15:48 +0000 (UTC) Received: from sentinel.math.Princeton.EDU (sentinel.math.Princeton.EDU [128.112.16.31]) by pigeon.gentoo.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id D3725E0D1A for ; Mon, 8 Feb 2010 02:08:54 +0000 (UTC) Received: from math.princeton.edu ([128.112.18.16]) by sentinel.math.Princeton.EDU with esmtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1NeJ3S-0005a3-T5 for gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org; Sun, 07 Feb 2010 21:08:54 -0500 Received: from math.Princeton.EDU (localhost.localdomain [127.0.0.1]) by math.Princeton.EDU (8.13.8/8.13.8) with ESMTP id o1828oAt022240 for ; Sun, 7 Feb 2010 21:08:50 -0500 Received: (from wwong@localhost) by math.Princeton.EDU (8.13.8/8.13.8/Submit) id o1828oPP022237 for gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org; Sun, 7 Feb 2010 21:08:50 -0500 Date: Sun, 7 Feb 2010 21:08:50 -0500 From: Willie Wong To: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org Subject: Re: [gentoo-user] 1-Terabyte drives - 4K sector sizes? -> bar performance so far Message-ID: <20100208020850.GA21754@math.princeton.edu> References: <5bdc1c8b1002070827i14f59047k39a695900ebe9889@mail.gmail.com> <20100207193947.GB30196@math.princeton.edu> <5bdc1c8b1002071342v6c81cf13gde7bcef72be5017b@mail.gmail.com> Precedence: bulk List-Post: List-Help: List-Unsubscribe: List-Subscribe: List-Id: Gentoo Linux mail X-BeenThere: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org Reply-to: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <5bdc1c8b1002071342v6c81cf13gde7bcef72be5017b@mail.gmail.com> User-Agent: Mutt/1.4.2.2i X-Archives-Salt: 7c1d6dec-87fb-42a8-9de0-759bc453feb8 X-Archives-Hash: e734f25c2d06aa98494b7decc1cc6ba9 On Sun, Feb 07, 2010 at 01:42:18PM -0800, Mark Knecht wrote: > OK - it turns out if I start fdisk using the -u option it show me > sector numbers. Looking at the original partition put on just using > default values it had the starting sector was 63 - probably about the > worst value it could be. As a test I blew away that partition and > created a new one starting at 64 instead and the untar results are > vastly improved - down to roughly 20 seconds from 8-10 minutes. That's > roughly twice as fast as the old 120GB SATA2 drive I was using to test > the system out while I debugged this issue. That's good to hear. > I'm still a little fuzzy about what happens to the extra sectors at > the end of a track. Are they used and I pay for a little bit of > overhead reading data off of them or are they ignored and I lose > capacity? I think it must be the former as my partition isn't all that > much less than 1TB. As far as I know, you shouldn't worry about it. The head/track/cylinder addressing is a relic of an older day. Almost all modern drives should be accessed via LBA. If interested, take a look at the wikipedia entry on Cylinder-Head-Sector and Logical Block Addressing. Basically, you are not losing anything. Cheers, W -- Willie W. Wong wwong@math.princeton.edu Data aequatione quotcunque fluentes quantitae involvente fluxiones invenire et vice versa ~~~ I. Newton