Re: ATA 4 KiB sector issues.

[Martin K. Petersen]

>>>>> "hpa" == H Peter Anvin <hpa@xxxxxxxxx> writes:

hpa> On the flipside, though, there really is very little net benefit to
hpa> 4K as opposed to 512 byte logical sectors: the additional protocol
hpa> overhead is relatively minimal, and as long as writes are aligned
hpa> full blocks, there shouldn't be any additional overhead on either
hpa> the OS or the drive side.  On the plus side, you get full
hpa> compatibility with the existing software stack.  The equation
hpa> really seems rather simple.

4KB sectors are not a win for anybody except the drive vendors.

There is a push in the industry right now to keep the 512-byte logical
blocks forever.  The first step would be to report misaligned accesses
or accesses that are not a multiple of the physical block size.  Second
step would be to eventually reject any write that's not a properly
aligned multiple of the physical block size.

-- 
Martin K. Petersen	Oracle Linux Engineering
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