From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1760797AbZBYX4b (ORCPT ); Wed, 25 Feb 2009 18:56:31 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1754178AbZBYX4W (ORCPT ); Wed, 25 Feb 2009 18:56:22 -0500 Received: from acsinet12.oracle.com ([141.146.126.234]:31176 "EHLO acsinet12.oracle.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1753502AbZBYX4V (ORCPT ); Wed, 25 Feb 2009 18:56:21 -0500 To: "H. Peter Anvin" Cc: "Martin K. Petersen" , Matthew Wilcox , linux-ide@vger.kernel.org, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, sandeen@redhat.com Subject: Re: ATA support for 4k sector size From: "Martin K. Petersen" Organization: Oracle References: <1235600698-6446-1-git-send-email-matthew@wil.cx> <49A5CBF7.9000501@zytor.com> <49A5D76A.3010301@zytor.com> Date: Wed, 25 Feb 2009 18:55:42 -0500 In-Reply-To: <49A5D76A.3010301@zytor.com> (H. Peter Anvin's message of "Wed\, 25 Feb 2009 15\:42\:34 -0800") Message-ID: User-Agent: Gnus/5.11 (Gnus v5.11) Emacs/22.2 (gnu/linux) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Source-IP: acsmt707.oracle.com [141.146.40.85] X-Auth-Type: Internal IP X-CT-RefId: str=0001.0A090207.49A5DA82.0082:SCFSTAT928724,ss=1,fgs=0 Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org >>>>> "hpa" == H Peter Anvin writes: >> Because of 63-sector legacy problems a bunch of ATA vendors will >> initially ship 512/4096 drives that are not naturally aligned. >> I.e. logical sector 63 will be aligned on a 4KB hardware sector >> boundary to overcome the misaligned default partitioning. >> hpa> I was under the impression Vista didn't do this? Is there any way hpa> to force these drives into a sane mode (at the expense of a total hpa> data loss)? Modern Windows aligns the first partition on a 1 MB boundary. As far as disks go, initially the plan was to have "legacy" branded drives with 63-sector alignment. But I think that has been abandoned in favor of instant one-time formatting. I.e. you can pick your poison *once* and that formatting will be done in constant time. Any subsequent changes to blocking and alignment will require a real low-level format. That's all fine and dandy if you go down and buy a drive a Fry's and you're the first to use it. But we don't have that luxury on systems that come preinstalled with Windows. In that case we have to deal with whatever the OEM decided during manufacturing. IOW, we have to deal with all the possible configurations. -- Martin K. Petersen Oracle Linux Engineering