We have a 2TB HDD having native 4k sector size but emulated as 512bytes. And we want to use this device with sector size 4k and not 512bytes. In mkfs.xfs there is option "-s", using which, one can set the sector size. What is the use case of this option? Also, such option is not present for ext4. So, apart from aligining the partition on multiple of 8 sector numbers do we have to do something else for using 4k sectors? We measured the write performance of XFS/EXT4 with sector size 512bytes and 4KB. XFS With 512 byte sector size=> RecSize WriteSpeed RanReadSpeed RanWriteSpeed 524288 22.12MB/sec 0.00MB/sec 0.00MB/sec 262144 18.87MB/sec 0.00MB/sec 0.00MB/sec 131072 18.25MB/sec 0.00MB/sec 0.00MB/sec 65536 18.90MB/sec 0.00MB/sec 0.00MB/sec 32768 23.26MB/sec 0.00MB/sec 0.00MB/sec 16384 18.21MB/sec 0.00MB/sec 0.00MB/sec 8192 21.23MB/sec 0.00MB/sec 0.00MB/sec 4096 20.58MB/sec 0.00MB/sec 0.00MB/sec XFS after setting 4KB sector size (-s size 4096) => RecSize WriteSpeed RanReadSpeed RanWriteSpeed 524288 21.93MB/sec 0.00MB/sec 0.00MB/sec 262144 28.49MB/sec 0.00MB/sec 0.00MB/sec 131072 25.64MB/sec 0.00MB/sec 0.00MB/sec 65536 24.27MB/sec 0.00MB/sec 0.00MB/sec 32768 26.39MB/sec 0.00MB/sec 0.00MB/sec 16384 28.49MB/sec 0.00MB/sec 0.00MB/sec 8192 22.83MB/sec 0.00MB/sec 0.00MB/sec 4096 24.88MB/sec 0.00MB/sec 0.00MB/sec Ext4 with default mkfs.ext4 options => RecSize WriteSpeed RanReadSpeed RanWriteSpeed 524288 31.95MB/sec 0.00MB/sec 0.00MB/sec 262144 26.88MB/sec 0.00MB/sec 0.00MB/sec 131072 23.04MB/sec 0.00MB/sec 0.00MB/sec 65536 25.91MB/sec 0.00MB/sec 0.00MB/sec 32768 24.69MB/sec 0.00MB/sec 0.00MB/sec 16384 24.27MB/sec 0.00MB/sec 0.00MB/sec 8192 32.05MB/sec 0.00MB/sec 0.00MB/sec 4096 30.21MB/sec 0.00MB/sec 0.00MB/sec Ext4 performed little better than XFS (-s size 4096). Seeing this, we are tempted to believe that ext4 is already using 4k sectors. Is there any way to make sure that ext4 is indeed using 4k sectors? -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-ext4" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html