[Triumf-linux-managers] WD20EARS Advanced Format Drive

[Kelvin Raywood]

Konstantin Olchanski wrote:
> There appears to be a problem with the latest "Advanced format drives" and
> SL-5.4 Linux. These disks use 4kbyte blocks internally and most
> web sites mumble about minor performance loss because standard Linux
> does not align the filesystems on these 4k boundaries, etc.
> 
> This was not my experience. After installing SL-5.4 on 2 mirrored (RAID1)
> 2TB WD20EARS disks, I had an unusable computer.

Thanks for the info Konstantin.

[story removed]

> So I tried some suggestions. To cut the story short,
> the action proposed by most web sites - forcing disk formatting
> to be "fdisk -H 224 -S 56" does work. ...
> 
> Unfortunately the SL linux installer does not know to do
> this "fdisk -H 224 -S 56" adjustement during the OS installation, ...
> 
> This issue will have to be raised with Red Hat and SL,

Did you find a RedHat bugzilla entry indicating that it will fixed be in 
a future installer?  Or perhaps it's already fixed in Fedora 13.

> ... but until they have a solution, perhaps we should issue a notice
> that "advanced format" disks are not recommended for general use as
> Linux system disks.

I spoke to Rob Watt and he is about to update the recommended hardware 
and will add a note about these disks.

> (Use by expert users should be okey - they can pre-partition the disks
> using knoppix & co before running the SL installer;

Actually, you can do it all with the SL installer.  At the partitioning 
stage, use <ctl><alt><f2> to get to a shell prompt.  Then, manually 
partition using the fdisk command recommended by Konstantin.  Return to 
the graphical installer with <ctl><alt><f6>

--
Kel Raywood
Core Computing and Networking
TRIUMF