linux-kernel - Re: ATA 4 KiB sector issues.

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Date:	Wed, 17 Mar 2010 12:44:04 +0900
From:	Tejun Heo <tj@...nel.org>
To:	Kevin Easton <caf@...rana.org>
CC:	James Bottomley <James.Bottomley@...e.de>,
	linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org
Subject: Re: ATA 4 KiB sector issues.

Hello,

On 03/17/2010 11:51 AM, Kevin Easton wrote:
> Can't we fix the problem by defaulting to aligning partitions to
> start on an LBA that is a multiple of 64260 ?
> 
> Such partitions will always be 4KiB-aligned, *and* start-of-cylinder
> aligned (assuming 255/63, as seems to be the norm).
> 
> Sure, that reduces your partition granularity to almost-32-MiB, but
> that's pretty small potatoes these days (and it's only a *default*, so
> you could always override that if you really cared, and didn't need 
> the compatibility).

The only thing we can gain by that is possible compatibility w/ very
old operating systems (<=w2k, BTW, it would be great if someone can
actually test it).  Plus, breaking the first cylinder assumption might
not be always safe to begin with.  I personally don't think it's
something worth departing from the behavior most vendors would assume
from now on (1MiB alignment).  It should be enough and safer to
provide a mechanism to choose legacy alignment if someone is trying to
put something which is older than a decade there.

Thanks.

-- 
tejun
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