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 <[email protected]> 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 > > _______________________________________________ > OpenIndiana-discuss mailing list > [email protected] > http://openindiana.org/mailman/listinfo/openindiana-discuss _______________________________________________ OpenIndiana-discuss mailing list [email protected] http://openindiana.org/mailman/listinfo/openindiana-discuss
