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

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Message-Id: <201003100046.24695.arnd@arndb.de>
Date:	Wed, 10 Mar 2010 00:46:24 +0100
From:	Arnd Bergmann <arnd@...db.de>
To:	Tejun Heo <tj@...nel.org>
Cc:	"linux-ide@...r.kernel.org" <linux-ide@...r.kernel.org>,
	lkml <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>,
	Daniel Taylor <Daniel.Taylor@....com>,
	Jeff Garzik <jeff@...zik.org>, Mark Lord <kernel@...savvy.com>,
	tytso@....edu, "H. Peter Anvin" <hpa@...or.com>,
	hirofumi@...l.parknet.co.jp,
	Andrew Morton <akpm@...ux-foundation.org>,
	Alan Cox <alan@...rguk.ukuu.org.uk>, irtiger@...il.com,
	Matthew Wilcox <matthew@....cx>, aschnell@...e.de,
	knikanth@...e.de, jdelvare@...e.de
Subject: Re: ATA 4 KiB sector issues.

On Monday 08 March 2010 04:48:35 Tejun Heo wrote:
> Unfortunately, while Windows can assume that newer releases won't
> share the hard drive with older releases including Windows XP, Linux
> distros can't do that.  There will be many installations where a
> modern Linux distros share a hard drive with older releases of
> Windows.  At this point, I can't see a silver bullet solution.
> 
> Partitioners maybe should only align partitions which will be used by
> Linux and default to the traditional layout for others while allowing
> explicit override.  I think Windows XP wouldn't have problem with
> differently aligned partitions as long as it doesn't actually use them
> but haven't tested it.

Any idea if XP can cope with partition tables that use a 32-sector, 128-head
geometry rather than the default 63-sector, 255-head one? That seems to
be what some flash memory cards are using and it would make any cylinder
aligned partition also 4096-byte aligned, at the cost of moving the
1024-cylinder boundary from 7.88 GiB to 2 GiB.

Do we know of anything that requires 63s/255h?

	Arnd
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