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 1Nev3N-0000Tn-OU for garchives@archives.gentoo.org; Tue, 09 Feb 2010 18:43:18 +0000 Received: from pigeon.gentoo.org (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by pigeon.gentoo.org (Postfix) with SMTP id 0E22BE1938 for ; Tue, 9 Feb 2010 18:43:17 +0000 (UTC) Received: from mail-pz0-f199.google.com (mail-pz0-f199.google.com [209.85.222.199]) by pigeon.gentoo.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 49B8FE1382 for ; Tue, 9 Feb 2010 18:21:11 +0000 (UTC) Received: by pzk37 with SMTP id 37so6007323pzk.10 for ; Tue, 09 Feb 2010 10:21:10 -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=2/v59T0gxDgWo3BH0Xho8WxZ5J4KpLL9j7GLdpghlDw=; b=M67cob99+/+dckaJBWCpR3SX6gPu9NjLne5beX8RzX0DHRwCcdCpR4x2aFRz3rIMI3 901+kRb1N63UpjuWyJYVHpkSWwFWr3cL5S+rETiq03GkYL109V5Ed2RVThryCV7glfRy FGcW/OuwjIbe5nCsetFG8rEzFk9Vo2hlfCjAg= 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=Y4r61zzpBduCWQZWMEPYTH+S4s9TPBQpI0WPcgNo3vwj0kwXudZiU2dHHrP2VomC7S UWlYgLy3+ZBE0XWtFIw7dWSfPWzG/H/SIViSUjAWkeZpNkxDOc1+b41evULUXXo2CMqB UcrnE86PCNtOVIk+IS2I+zYxrZC1asdnRrCrg= 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 10.143.27.42 with SMTP id e42mr5548492wfj.234.1265739670793; Tue, 09 Feb 2010 10:21:10 -0800 (PST) In-Reply-To: <201002091810.00578.Warp_7@gmx.de> References: <5bdc1c8b1002070827i14f59047k39a695900ebe9889@mail.gmail.com> <5bdc1c8b1002081637k685720eewc3b1a805653837d7@mail.gmail.com> <201002090348.26292.Warp_7@gmx.de> <201002091810.00578.Warp_7@gmx.de> Date: Tue, 9 Feb 2010 10:21:10 -0800 Message-ID: <5bdc1c8b1002091021k6ce93c03u5bb0d7e02a396f9e@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: 603c6984-ba02-4e54-a3d9-2b35f9f65e7f X-Archives-Hash: 41596b8af9762cb0eb5df96384ae8a2d On Tue, Feb 9, 2010 at 9:09 AM, Frank Steinmetzger wrote: > So sdb7 now ends at sector 976703935. Interestingly, I couldn=E2=80=99t u= se the > immediate next sector for sdb8: > start for sdb8 =C2=A0 response by fdisk > 976703936 =C2=A0 =C2=A0 =C2=A0 =C2=A0sector already allocated > 976703944 =C2=A0 =C2=A0 =C2=A0 =C2=A0Value out of range. First sector... = (default 976703999): > > The first one fdisk offered me was exactly 64 sectors behind the end sect= or of > sdb7 (976703999), which would leave a space of those mysterious 62 =E2=80= =9Cempty=E2=80=9D > sectors in between. So I used 976704000, which is divisable by 64 again, > though it=E2=80=99s not that relevant for a partition of 31 MB. :D Again, this is probably unrelated to anything going on in this thread but I started wondering this morning if maybe fdisk could take a step forward with these newer disk technologies and build in some smarts about where to put partition boundaries. I.e. - if I'm using a 4K block size disk why not have fdisk do things better? My first thought was to look at the man page for fdisk and see who the author was. I did not find any email addresses. However I did find some very interesting comments about partitioning disks in the bugs section, quoted below. I don't think I need what the 'bugs' author perceives as the advantages of fdisk so I think I'll try to focus a bit more on cfdisk. Interestingly cfdisk was the tool Willie pointed out when he kindly took the time to educate me on what was going on physically. - Mark [QUOTE] BUGS There are several *fdisk programs around. Each has its problems and strengths. Try them in the order cfdisk, fdisk, sfdisk. (Indeed, cfdisk is a beautiful program that has strict requirements on the partition tables it accepts, and produces high quality partition tables. Use it if you can. fdisk is a buggy program that does fuzzy things - usually it happens to produce reasonable results. Its single advantage is that it has some support for BSD disk labels and other non-DOS partition tables. Avoid it if you can. sfdisk is for hackers only - the user interface is terrible, but it is more correct than fdisk and more powerful than both fdisk and cfdisk. Moreover, it can be used noninteractively.) [/QUOTE]