On 05/22/2010 07:39 PM, Robert Nichols wrote: > On 05/22/2010 05:46 PM, Les Mikesell wrote: >> Does the 4K sector size mean that the drive is going to read the 4K chunk then >> merge in the 512 bytes you wrote, the wait for the sector come around again to >> write it back? I guess that could explain the 10x write speed difference >> regardless of cylinder alignment. Read speed doesn't seem that much different. > > Yes, that's exactly what it means. Every unaligned write or write that is > not a multiple of the 4KB sector size becomes a read-modify-write within the > drive, and a 10X reduction in write throughput is typical. I should add that the kernel normally will do I/O in multiples of its 4KB (typical) page size where possible, but I have no idea whether any effort is made to align those writes if the drive does not report a 4KB physical sector size, or whether it even makes sense to try beyond what the elevator algorithm does for coalescing sequential writes. I don't currently have any of these "enhanced format" drives, nor am I using RAID, so all I can report is the collected experience of others. -- Bob Nichols "NOSPAM" is really part of my email address. Do NOT delete it. _______________________________________________ CentOS mailing list CentOS@xxxxxxxxxx http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos