[OpenIndiana-discuss] Seagate ST3000DM001

[Timothy Coalson]

While I haven't used that particular model, if it mentions advanced
format/smartalign, then it probably at least has a version that uses
4k sectors, and smartalign as I understand it basically means that the
drive exposes this in a way that the OS can detect (part of the
identify command I think?).  The detailed spec sheets may mention
physical sector size, and I seem to recall some seagates having 512
and 4k sector versions for the same size and model drive.  However,
this really only matters if you are replacing a disk in a multi-device
zpool.

If you don't know what sector size zfs used on your hitachi drive, you
can run zdb -C on the pool, ashift=9 means 512, ashift=12 means 4k.
Since it is a single disk pool, if you have a spare sata port (or can
spare one from an optical drive or something temporarily), you could
just make a new pool on the new disk and zfs send/receive the data
over (as long as it isn't over ~85% full, zfs will at least report
less usable space on a fresh ashift=12 pool by around 8%).  You can
then export the pools, and reimport the new pool under the old pool's
name if you want.

I know of no drawbacks to ashift=12 or 4k sector drives in general
besides the capacity thing, and I expect zfs to get the sector
size/alignment right (use whole disk mode).  What problems are you
worried about?

Tim

On Wed, Jul 11, 2012 at 3:01 PM, Reginald Beardsley <pulaskite at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Anyone have any experience w/ these w/ Solaris 10 & ZFS?  The system this is for is an HP Z400 on the last Sun release of Solaris 10. This is a single large non-booting pool used for temporary files.  Single drive, no RAID.
>
> The blurb touts "Seagate SmartAlign technology for no-hassle transition to Advanced Format 4K sector technology"
>
> Some of the posts here about 4k sectors make me a little nervous that it might prove more work than I'd like.  Current drive is a Hitachi which is failing and has been powered down.
>
> Thanks,
> Reg
>
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