ZFS and 4k sector drives

Rob lists at midsummerdream.org
Mon Nov 15 15:04:41 UTC 2010


I'm trying to figure out how, if it's possible, to make the 4k sector 
drives work with ZFS raidz2 pools.  It seems that most of the 4k sector 
drives are using emulation, and reporting 512 byte sectors to the OS 
instead of their native 4k size.  I know someone who had an issue trying 
to insert one of these drives into a running ZFS pool with other 512 
byte sector drives with bad results.

At one point I was told that it might be possible to use geli to specify 
the sector size (4k) and add those geli devices to a ZFS pool.  I've 
even seen mention of using gnop.  Does anyone know how well either 
solution works?  Is there a known way to get these 4k sector drives to 
work in ZFS raidz2?

In addition to that, how does ZFS handle drives with different sector 
sizes?  Can I have a pool with 512 byte and 4k sector drives, or should 
all drives in a pool have the same sector size?

Rob


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