What are the correct mkfs.xfs parameters for a lying WD-EARS HDD?
Hi
More than a month ago i bought 4 Western Digital WD15EARS (1.5 TB) which are (AFAIK) the first general/commercial available 4k sector SATA-HDDs.
Unfortunatly the HDDs lie about the 4k physical sector size and the most prominent drawback is a worse than abysmal delete performance. ("Normal" Read & Write-performance is OK)
So if i wanted to (re-)mkfs the filesystems what would the correct parameters be?
Kernel/Userspace is pretty recent (Debian-SID):
mkfs.xfs version 3.1.1, kernel v2.6.33, util-linux 2.16.0 Not that that should matter when the HDDs lies.
Bis denn
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Real Programmers consider "what you see is what you get" to be just as bad a concept in Text Editors as it is in women. No, the Real Programmer wants a "you asked for it, you got it" text editor -- complicated, cryptic, powerful, unforgiving, dangerous. _______________________________________________ xfs mailing list [email protected] http://oss.sgi.com/mailman/listinfo/xfs
Quoted 10 lines · Matthias Schniedermeyer
Hi
More than a month ago i bought 4 Western Digital WD15EARS (1.5 TB) which are (AFAIK) the first general/commercial available 4k sector SATA-HDDs.
Unfortunatly the HDDs lie about the 4k physical sector size and the most prominent drawback is a worse than abysmal delete performance. ("Normal" Read & Write-performance is OK)
Quoted 6 lines
So if i wanted to (re-)mkfs the filesystems what would the correct parameters be?
Kernel/Userspace is pretty recent (Debian-SID):
mkfs.xfs version 3.1.1, kernel v2.6.33, util-linux 2.16.0 Not that that should matter when the HDDs lies.
Recent kernel+util-linux-ng++fdisk+parted+xfsprogs -should- do the right thing for you.... Oh, but this was maybe the drive that didn't output the right stuff when queried.
Make sure your partitions, if any, are on 4k boundaries.(*) older fdisk at least won't do this by default, not sure about parted.
once that is done, tell mkfs.xfs "-s size=4096" to set the 4k sector size (again, all-upstream should do this magically for sane drives)
-Eric
(*)unless the drive has an offset to make 512-sector 63 line up on a nice boundary... in which case I guess you could experiment with perf both ways to be sure...
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Bis denn
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Quoted 14 lines · Eric Sandeen
Quoted 13 lines · Matthias Schniedermeyer
Hi
More than a month ago i bought 4 Western Digital WD15EARS (1.5 TB) which are (AFAIK) the first general/commercial available 4k sector SATA-HDDs.
Unfortunatly the HDDs lie about the 4k physical sector size and the most prominent drawback is a worse than abysmal delete performance. ("Normal" Read & Write-performance is OK)
So if i wanted to (re-)mkfs the filesystems what would the correct parameters be?
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Kernel/Userspace is pretty recent (Debian-SID):
mkfs.xfs version 3.1.1, kernel v2.6.33, util-linux 2.16.0 Not that that should matter when the HDDs lies.Recent kernel+util-linux-ng++fdisk+parted+xfsprogs -should- do the right thing for you.... Oh, but this was maybe the drive that didn't output the right stuff when queried.
hdparm -I /dev/sdg | grep "Sector size"
Logical/Physical Sector size: 512 bytes
hdparm -V
hdparm v9.27
I vagely remember a posting on LKML that said it's a "known problem" that the WD??EARS lie about physical sector size.
Quoted 2 lines
Make sure your partitions, if any, are on 4k boundaries.(*) older fdisk at least won't do this by default, not sure about parted.
It's an encrypted loop at am 4k offset to leave space for a fake MBR (and more importantly a signature for a custom udev-script).
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once that is done, tell mkfs.xfs "-s size=4096" to set the 4k sector size
So that should be enough?
Time for backup/mkfs/restore then.
Bis denn
Signature · 9 lines
Real Programmers consider "what you see is what you get" to be just as bad a concept in Text Editors as it is in women. No, the Real Programmer wants a "you asked for it, you got it" text editor -- complicated, cryptic, powerful, unforgiving, dangerous. _______________________________________________ xfs mailing list [email protected] http://oss.sgi.com/mailman/listinfo/xfs
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"Eric" == Eric Sandeen <[email protected]> writes:
Eric> Make sure your partitions, if any, are on 4k boundaries.(*) older Eric> fdisk at least won't do this by default, not sure about parted.
You can use the expert mode in fdisk to ensure that the partition begins on a 4KB boundary.
Eric> (*)unless the drive has an offset to make 512-sector 63 line up on Eric> a nice boundary... in which case I guess you could experiment with Eric> perf both ways to be sure...
EARS is the one that's lying about the physical block size. It's zero-aligned unless somebody messed with the jumper.
Signature · 6 lines
Martin K. Petersen Oracle Linux Engineering _______________________________________________ xfs mailing list [email protected] http://oss.sgi.com/mailman/listinfo/xfs
Quoted 7 lines · Martin K. Petersen
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"Eric" == Eric Sandeen <[email protected]> writes:
Eric> Make sure your partitions, if any, are on 4k boundaries.(*) older Eric> fdisk at least won't do this by default, not sure about parted.
You can use the expert mode in fdisk to ensure that the partition begins on a 4KB boundary.
and use -u to give it sector units ...
Quoted 7 lines
Eric> (*)unless the drive has an offset to make 512-sector 63 line up on Eric> a nice boundary... in which case I guess you could experiment with Eric> perf both ways to be sure...
EARS is the one that's lying about the physical block size. It's zero-aligned unless somebody messed with the jumper.
Ok, that's good.
Thanks Martin!
-Eric
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Quoted 12 lines · Matthias Schniedermeyer
Quoted 11 lines · Eric Sandeen
Quoted 10 lines · Matthias Schniedermeyer
Hi
More than a month ago i bought 4 Western Digital WD15EARS (1.5 TB) which are (AFAIK) the first general/commercial available 4k sector SATA-HDDs.
Unfortunatly the HDDs lie about the 4k physical sector size and the most prominent drawback is a worse than abysmal delete performance. ("Normal" Read & Write-performance is OK)
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So if i wanted to (re-)mkfs the filesystems what would the correct parameters be?
once that is done, tell mkfs.xfs "-s size=4096" to set the 4k sector size
So that should be enough?
Time for backup/mkfs/restore then.
backup/mkfs/restore is finished.
I'm currently testing delete-performance.
And it improved to abysmal performance. (As expected)
Read-latency, while deleting, has also improved drastically. Before the FS was near unusable while deleting. But that is also to be expected from such a HDD when it is doing RMW like there is no tomorrow. ;-)
Bis denn
Signature · 9 lines
Real Programmers consider "what you see is what you get" to be just as bad a concept in Text Editors as it is in women. No, the Real Programmer wants a "you asked for it, you got it" text editor -- complicated, cryptic, powerful, unforgiving, dangerous. _______________________________________________ xfs mailing list [email protected] http://oss.sgi.com/mailman/listinfo/xfs
Hi,
You can use GPT fdisk (gdisk) to do the partitioning. The author had the exact same problem with the performance of WD 4 kB sector drives. The tool automatically sets the partition start and end at 4 kB boundaries. You can in fact set the partition start and end at any sector you want.
It is the firmware in the WD drives that translates the physical 4 kB sector to 512 byte sectors.
GL
Quoted 51 lines · Matthias Schniedermeyer
From: Matthias Schniedermeyer <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: What are the correct mkfs.xfs parameters for a lying WD-EARS HDD?
To: "Eric Sandeen" <[email protected]>
Cc: [email protected]
Date: Wednesday, 10 March, 2010, 5:41 AMQuoted 6 lines · Matthias Schniedermeyer
Quoted 5 lines · Eric Sandeen
Quoted 4 lines · Matthias Schniedermeyer
Hi
More than a month ago i bought 4 Western
Digital WD15EARS (1.5 TB) which
Quoted 1 line
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are (AFAIK) the first general/commercial
available 4k sector SATA-HDDs.
Quoted 2 lines
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Unfortunatly the HDDs lie about the 4k
physical sector size and the most
Quoted 1 line
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prominent drawback is a worse than abysmal
delete performance.
Quoted 1 line
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("Normal" Read & Write-performance is
OK)
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Quoted 2 lines
So if i wanted to (re-)mkfs the filesystems
what would the correct
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parameters be?
once that is done, tell mkfs.xfs "-s size=4096"
to set the 4k sector size
Quoted 3 lines
So that should be enough?
Time for backup/mkfs/restore then.backup/mkfs/restore is finished.
I'm currently testing delete-performance.
And it improved to abysmal performance. (As expected)Read-latency, while deleting, has also improved drastically. Before the
FS was near unusable while deleting. But that is also to be expected
from such a HDD when it is doing RMW like there is no tomorrow. ;-)
Quoted 16 lines
Bis denn
Signature · 12 lines
Real Programmers consider "what you see is what you get" to be just as bad a concept in Text Editors as it is in women. No, the Real Programmer wants a "you asked for it, you got it" text editor -- complicated, cryptic, powerful, unforgiving, dangerous. _______________________________________________ xfs mailing list [email protected] http://oss.sgi.com/mailman/listinfo/xfs
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