gpart -b 34 versus gpart -b 1024

[Adam Vande More]

On Sat, Jul 24, 2010 at 10:58 PM, Dan Langille <dan at langille.org> wrote:

>       -------Sequential Output-------- ---Sequential Input-- --Random--
>       -Per Char- --Block--- -Rewrite-- -Per Char- --Block--- --Seeks---
>    GB M/sec %CPU M/sec %CPU M/sec %CPU M/sec %CPU M/sec %CPU  /sec %CPU
>    50 110.5 81.0 112.8 15.0  62.8  9.0  72.9 48.5 139.7  9.5   144  0.9
>
> Here, the results aren't much better either...  am I not aligning this
> partition correctly?  Missing something else?  Or... are they both 4K block
> aligned?


The alignment doesn't apply to all drives, just the 4k WD's and some ssd's.

If they were misaligned, you would see a large difference in the tests.  A
few points one way or other in these is largely meaningless.

That being said, if I were you I would set -b 2048(1 MB) as the default, the
amount of space wasted is trivial and your partition will always be
aligned.  People following your tutorials may have a variety of different
drives and that setting is safe for all.

Windows defaults to this offset for the same reason:

 DISKPART> list partition

  Partition ###  Type              Size     Offset
  -------------  ----------------  -------  -------

  Partition 1    Primary           1116 GB  1024 KB



-- 
Adam Vande More