Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo on a Dell XPS 13 Ultrabook

[Mark Knecht <markknecht@gmail.com>]

On Sun, Mar 4, 2012 at 1:09 PM, Grant <emailgrant@gmail.com> wrote:
> [snip]
>>> 1. fdisk won't let me specify a start block before 2048 even though I
>>> deleted all partitions.
>>>
>>
>> That's normal. It's a long story, but Windows Vista and Windows 7 expects
>> the first partition to start at sector 2048.
>>
>> You can force a lower number by toggling "DOS compatibility"; this should
>> let you start the first partition as low as sector 63.
>>
>> HOWEVER, make sure that all partitions begin at multiples of 8 (e.g., 64,
>> 72, 80, and so on); this will save you a lot of grief if it happens that the
>> hard disk you're using has 4KiB-sectors.
>
> I just looked up the start block for my other systems and they're all
> on 63.  Is performance impacted on all of these systems since they
> aren't started on 64?
>
> - Grant
>

The performance is only impacted if the sector size is something other
 than 512 bytes. The newer 4K sector size used by some higher density
drives requires that you start partitions on a sector boundary or they
will perform badly. There isn't an actually performance need to
actually start on 2048 but the fdisk-type developer folks are doing
that to be more compatible with newer Windows installations.

HTH,
Mark