Maybe it’s a stupid question, but I lost almost 3 days to fix this problem… so I was wondering, does someone know if suse is going to be compatible with the new 4k HDD??
I found that the only solution (for the moment with 11.2) is to align manually the partitions before the installation using the recovery console and fdisk… not so “plug and play” 
I tried to install without the alignment… and the result was an HDD very fast in reading but so slow in writing… and the OS freezed every 30 seconds…
On 03/19/2010 07:26 PM, za-a-za wrote:
>
> Maybe it’s a stupid question, but I lost almost 3 days to fix this
> problem… so I was wondering, does someone know if suse is going to be
> compatible with the new 4k HDD??
> I found that the only solution (for the moment with 11.2) is to align
> manually the partitions before the installation using the recovery
> console and fdisk… not so “plug and play”
> I tried to install without the alignment… and the result was an HDD
> very fast in reading but so slow in writing… and the OS freezed every
> 30 seconds…
The developers have been actively discussing the 4K sector problem. Whatever
evolves will be in kernels 2.6.34 and beyond. As such changes are likely to be
quite invasive, they will probably not be ported back to 2.6.31, .32, or .33. As
a result, they will not be in 11.2, and probably not in 11.3.
The partitioning utilities will likely be changed to default to 4K alignment and
flag a misalignment.
Thx a lot for the reply, but now I’m quite sad 
…
The next time, before buy, I should check the compatibility of EVERY component!!
Anyway, now is working well so it doesn’t matter I was just curious
Thx again and see you
Well, thanks for posting any way. … I’ve been thinking of adding another external hard drive to my collection of Maxtor/Seagate drives, and was curious about the WD HDD …
Well, after reading this thread my curiousity is satiated. I think I’ll consider either a Lacie or a Maxtor/Seagate (again) external drive.
Surely these drives are backward compatible with 512 byte block OSes. WD would be risking a lot of sales if they weren’t. As I understand the ATA-8 standard, there is a transitional mode until all OSes catch up. The slowness may be due to the power saving kicking in. Are you able to increase the timeout with hdparm?
BTW I have the 1.5TB models in my NAS which is based on Linux and they work fine. The power management is set to kick in at 30 minutes on these drives.
Thx, but was only a problem of alignment…
The HDD is compatible (now it is working well)
but if you install suse 11.2 following the instructions
you’ll need more than 30 minutes to copy the installations files on the HDD and the OS will be slow with a lot of problems
If you align the partitions before install the OS, it works well (but I lost 3 day to understand why my suse was so slow…)and I was only curious to know in which suse the alignment will be done by default (in the 4k HDD).
lwfinger entirely satisfied my curiosity
alignment ? I’ve never heard of such a thing.
Thats enough to turn me off.
In every external hard drive that I have purchased I just plugged it in and it worked.
No alignment needed.
WD just lost my business. I’ll continue to look for a Lacie or a Maxtor/Seagate>
Clarification: The 512 byte sector is a constraint on very large drives, becoming an issue at 1TB. The “advanced format” technology changes the sector size to 4kb, which besides resolving manufacturing issues will result in more free space to the user and better file system and memory paging alignment. WD is the first to roll out this technology in the Green EARS series, but it has been approved by the industry consortium and will over time be phased in by all manufacturers. On the WD drives there is a jumper which will put the disk in 512 emulation mode, averting the issue altogether. IIRC the linux kernel has no problem using 4kb sectors; the issue arises with various tools which all assume the traditional 512. Fdisk must be used with a particular parameter, I think gparted works OK, but obviously there are many tools which use this data and so these must be modified. To use 4kb, one needs only ensure that partitions are in multiples of 8; this is not difficult to do (except in XP) but the principal gotcha is that typically the first partition begins at sector 63 - with advanced formatting it needs to start at 64. WD also provides a partitioning tool (I haven’t seen it).
excellent summary!!
In fact I just wanted to underline that suse 11.2 (by default) set the first partition at sector 63 (like XP ) and if someone wants to use the new HDD should be use the manual partitioning tool.
bye bye
Scratching my head very hard … and :X
Could this be the reason for my problems described here:
iowait slows system down - openSUSE Forums
My server has two ATA WDC WD10EARS-00Y.
Definitely could be…
I got the same problems and I fixed them with the alignment 
Just try
fdisk -l -u /dev/your_hdd
and if you read that the partition start at sector 63,
you’ll know where is the problem
Just to clarify the clarification a little; keep in mind the fact that the reason that this change is coming in is that it allows the disk are to be used a little more efficiently, so if you use the ‘revert to backward compatibility mode’ link, you will lose some disk space. Given that people already get exercised about the file space that they get and whether they are being cheated by the 1000/1024 = kilo issue, it may be interesting to see how this goes down.
…I think gparted works OK, but obviously there are many tools which use this data and so these must be modified. To use 4kb, one needs only ensure that partitions are in multiples of 8; this is not difficult to do (except in XP) but the principal gotcha is that typically the first partition begins at sector 63 - with advanced formatting it needs to start at 64.
Presumably, someone at some time, will have to come up with a how-to on this, or this will keep coming up…
and if you read that the partition start at sector 63, you’ll know where is the problem
yes, my first partition definitely starts at sector 63
Does this mean to start a new installation from scratch? I’ve got two drives. Can I copy things over and fix one by one?
While of course I cannot say for sure, an educated guess would be that, yes, the issue above could be your problem. Take a look at the partitioning with a reliable tool - try the most recent version of Gparted. Verify the first partition begins on sector 64 (which is the 65th sector) and that the size of all partitions are in multiples of 8. Also check into the 512 legacy emulation jumper on the drive. Good luck.
I read up on this and my head is still spinning. I do believe when you guys are saying multiples of 8, that applies to the sectors (i.e. sector blocks regarding LBA) specifically, not the partitions per se.
Older versions of GParted will NOT align the partitions. I think the development of solving the problem has been slow enough that for me, I would only use ONE partition with one of these drives just to make things simpler. In that case, it is probably way easier to deal with.
I read that you need certain packages that make up parted and the partitioning software in Linux. Libparted is one that needs to be the most recent. Use the most recent version of GNU Parted. Also, look for ‘util-linux-ng 2.17.1.’
Else, you have to use fdisk and parted manually.
I haven’t used 11.2 myself but I plan to when I do a major reconfigure to my OS drive. I’ll have some distros in VirtualBox. I believe that 11.2 when installed from scratch (say from release ver.) won’t have the required packages up to date that align the partitions for the newer 4kb sector drives. Therefore, you need something like Partition Magic, System Rescue CD, Open Suse updated/upgraded to 11.3 (to make things easier rather than trying to determine which packages to update) or if I am allowed to suggest it, use Fedora 13 Beta/Alpha (most recent Fedora) which is at kernel 2.6.34 and all the required updated partition software packages.
I typed too much, maybe?
Of course, the easiest solution for now is to not use the EARS drive series; the EADS series does not use this technology and is available in the same sizes.
Gparted uses libparted, which is why I’ve read (but haven’t confirmed) that the most recent vsn handles the issue. Even so, one has to still be careful with other utilities which may misread the drive.
A single partition on a =>1TB drive seems to me an extreme solution, unless that already fits the use case. Alternatively I would recommend the 512 emulation or the manual setup. Or, set up the disk with a distro using the newest kernel, whether that be a beta Fedora or beta openSUSE 11.3.
To answer the OP’s question I can confirm that WD10EARS drives work very well with openSUSE-11.2 i586. The only requirement is to align the format of the partitions with the physical 4KB blocks used internally. parted-2.2 does the job well and compiles on 11.2. For details see my post here:
Well done!
I am right in assuming this 4KB physical sector size issue is solved in openSUSE 11.4 with the 2.6.37.6-0.7-desktop kernel without any fiddling in the partitioner?
From what I have seen, OpenSuse 11.4 automatically aligns partitions correctly on 2 MiB boundaries - the installer and fdisk that ships with 11.4 has no issues whatsoever, and the partition table is created as aligned properly. Not so with 11.2 or 11.3.
Default, 11.4, aligned partitions:
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 2048 419424255 209711104 83 Linux
/dev/sda2 419424256 427810815 4193280 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda3 427810816 488280063 30234624 83 Linux
I’m not surprised this issue came up for the OP on 11.2, but users going forward should have no issues, with with drives in 4K native or in 512k emulation.
fdisk -l -u will show if your partition table was created with the old 63 sector offset, or using new aligned values.
I wrote up the start of a guide / article on this last year, and it is mostly compete. There are links to some good resources in it:
Advanced Format Hard Drives - Lyceum
Cheers,
Lews Therin