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 1NeehI-00008d-UB for garchives@archives.gentoo.org; Tue, 09 Feb 2010 01:15:25 +0000 Received: from pigeon.gentoo.org (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by pigeon.gentoo.org (Postfix) with SMTP id 2C3F5E145C for ; Tue, 9 Feb 2010 01:15:24 +0000 (UTC) Received: from mail-px0-f199.google.com (mail-px0-f199.google.com [209.85.216.199]) by pigeon.gentoo.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id A56B8E1062 for ; Tue, 9 Feb 2010 00:37:07 +0000 (UTC) Received: by pxi37 with SMTP id 37so7335525pxi.9 for ; Mon, 08 Feb 2010 16:37:07 -0800 (PST) DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=gmail.com; s=gamma; h=domainkey-signature:mime-version:received:in-reply-to:references :date:message-id:subject:from:to:content-type :content-transfer-encoding; bh=NHpLz3Ky0xs4epwnWhG9drz38DPtoljfzIzqri89WKI=; b=RMO5OMNlybPpmfOKxF+aHnsxN8d3sLTlpWXgpwnTfr/Pj25XLaI/za5BrwVXDnFxqm JDNayR+rvTjApxTm83w8Q9gmulU91HnfXS2yt1/mh8G5gmHKTWSGJIxWFvNzi4DdRr0D AO+2wk+S4uRZ5sO8nGRm85uLXCgrbCSkq5St8= DomainKey-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; c=nofws; d=gmail.com; s=gamma; h=mime-version:in-reply-to:references:date:message-id:subject:from:to :content-type:content-transfer-encoding; b=a5wRVCxTTgwR9D9hxsfX1YY8/Q2l8cw89sIY4Sxq0pTKmSEeVwAIulooSMbxYrD25t Z1Roc+9JGW47MBL/IUkTuPON7w9cCs6oyQbNkgtaafugWTvfLeCkgTyYyE1r21uDl7PC L/6BIxh21qkGEfSEzqaMq7a+x3zvdL3zH6nJg= 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 Received: by 10.142.1.35 with SMTP id 35mr4781757wfa.344.1265675827173; Mon, 08 Feb 2010 16:37:07 -0800 (PST) In-Reply-To: <201002090105.13960.Warp_7@gmx.de> References: <5bdc1c8b1002070827i14f59047k39a695900ebe9889@mail.gmail.com> <20100207193947.GB30196@math.princeton.edu> <5bdc1c8b1002071342v6c81cf13gde7bcef72be5017b@mail.gmail.com> <201002090105.13960.Warp_7@gmx.de> Date: Mon, 8 Feb 2010 16:37:07 -0800 Message-ID: <5bdc1c8b1002081637k685720eewc3b1a805653837d7@mail.gmail.com> Subject: Re: [gentoo-user] 1-Terabyte drives - 4K sector sizes? -> bar performance so far From: Mark Knecht To: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable X-Archives-Salt: 774d8f9b-b8dd-4c66-a96a-163d6d294a44 X-Archives-Hash: 5865f1d4ca3e27ace78a756f0a7f2086 On Mon, Feb 8, 2010 at 4:05 PM, Frank Steinmetzger wrote: > Am Sonntag, 7. Februar 2010 schrieb Mark Knecht: > >> Hi Willie, >> =C2=A0 =C2=A0OK - it turns out if I start fdisk using the -u option it s= how me >> sector numbers. Looking at the original partition put on just using >> default values it had the starting sector was 63 > > Same here. > >> - probably about the worst value it could be. > > Hm.... what about those first 62 sectors? > I bought this 500GB drive for my laptop recently and did a fresh partitio= ning > scheme on it, and then rsynced the filesystems of the old, smaller drive = onto > it. The first two partitions are ntfs, but I believe they also use cluste= r > sizes of 4k by default. So technically I could repartition everything and > then restore the contents from my backup drive. > > And indeed my system becomes very sluggish when I do some HDD shuffling. > >> 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. > > Though the result justifies your decision, I would have though one has to > start at 65, unless the disk starts counting its sectors at 0. > -- > Gru=C3=9F | Greetings | Qapla' > Programmers don=E2=80=99t die, they GOSUB without RETURN. > Good question. I don't know where it starts counting but 63 seems to be the first one you can use on any blank drive I've looked at so far. There's a few small downsides I've run into with all of this so far: 1) Since we don't use sector 63 it seems that fdisk will still tell you that you can use 63 until you use up all your primary partitions. It used to be easier to put additional partitions on when it gave you the next sector you could use after the one you just added.. Now I'm finding that I need to write things down and figure it out more carefully outside of fdisk. 2) When I do something like +60G fdisk chooses the final sector, but it seems that it doesn't end 1 sector before something divisible by 8, so again, once the new partition is in I need to do more calculations to find where then next one will go. Probably better to decide what you want for an end and make sure that the next sector is divisible by 8. 3) When I put in an extended partition I put the start of it at something divisible by 8. When I went to add a logical partition inside of that I found that there was some strange number of sectors dedicated to the extended partition itself and I had to waste a few more sectors getting the logical partitions divisible by 8. 4) Everything I've done so far leave me with messages about partition 1 not ending on a cylinder boundary. Googling on that one says don't worry about it. I don't know... So, it works - the new partitions are fast but it's a bit of work getting them in place. - Mark