sorry for the hijack but is there any way to check if a disk does support this feature or not?
I understand it this way. Big sectors' size isn't a feature. It is manufacturers attempt to make hdd cheap (less disk space is used for gaps between sectors). Even being aligned such hdd - say, WD EARS series - is less productive on some circumstances than real 512 bytes per sector one - say WD EADS series. And aligning is just a step to prevent making performance worse than it can be.
Look at (in Russian, so pictures at least) here: http://www.fcenter.ru/online.shtml?arti … /hdd/28121
]]>I'm replying from AL on repartitioned HDD. gparted was used. All is OK. Moving (to align) and resizing (from 900GB to 200GB) a partition takes ~5 hours.
HDD speed is really higher now. On some operations and without any exaggeration almost 2 times.
]]>Just leaving it won't do any great harm, but it will defeat the purpose of having an Advanced Format drive, leaving you with more inaccessible space and no performance boost. It might also lead to increased rates of fragmentation, since the chance of breaking data up along sectors is greater, thus slowing your drive down with time. There is software that can realign your partitions properly, but I haven't used any myself; try searching around for it. When I set mine up, I just used Gparted from a LiveCD, which automatically aligns the partitions to sector 2048 for you. You might just be able to use it to move partitions. This would be time-consuming (mostly waiting), but solve the issue.
Do you mean gparted has kept all your data intact during aligning?
]]>I'm not very sure but I think you can use some partitioning tool to fix it.
You see, it is rather difficult to decide to use this or that tool without at least few successful stories
Or just leave it be. It doesn't do you any harm anyway.
It seems to be the most probable variant now...
]]># fdisk -c -u /dev/sda
As for GPT it's aligned by default
]]>So I have not-aligned /dev/sda2 (ind it is a /):
$ sudo fdisk -l
Disk /dev/sda: 1000.2 GB, 1000204886016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 121601 cylinders, total 1953525168 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00000000
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 63 996029 497983+ 83 Linux
/dev/sda2 996030 1836936359 917970165 83 Linux
/dev/sda3 1836936360 1944363014 53713327+ 83 Linux
/dev/sda4 1944363015 1953520064 4578525 82 Linux swap / Solaris
996030 / 8 = 124503.75 - isn't an integer.
Does it mean I must reinstall the whole system to cure the problem?
]]>I have HDD with 4K sector size. I have found reports partitions must be "4K-aligned". During AL installation I used, of course, whole (integer) numbers of MB during partitioning the hard drive. EXT4 fs-es are in use. Does it all guarantee 4K alignment? Hot to check/verify?
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