SUMMARY
I have a Dell Inspiron 17-5767 laptop with a 1TB internal disk I've allowed the originally shipped Windows 10 to continue to have and dominate all to itself (it's my gaming OS). Additionally I have two external drives from which I do and will boot my current and future Linux OS. My current setup is as follows:
- USB 3.0 Port #0: Seagate Expansion+ 931.5 GiB (1000204885504 bytes) External HDD recognized as /dev/sdb
- currently housing one full-size, empty ext4 partition, but have been struggling to replace this with an optimal aligned partitioning scheme of 12 partitions (the point of struggle being with the alignment)
- USB 3.0 Port #1: 238.5 GiB (256060514304 bytes) Samsung SSD 840 Pro recognized as /dev/sdc
- was partitioned using the Fedora LiveCD's installer (with the "custom" option), and houses both my Fedora LXDE and Lubuntu linux distros within a single LVM containing a shared swap space, shared user space, separate roots, and separate external boot partitions (by external here, I just mean not in the LVM but in their own separate primary partitions elsewhere on the same disk)
- This drive has both a physical and logical block size of 512, and is optimally aligned, according to parted's 'align-check opt x' utility, and fdisk is happy with the alignment too (no alignment complaints from any utility)
- UEFI BIOS attempts to boot from USB before internal so I get grub popping up with all my available options
GOAL
I'm trying to replicate something like what I have going on with /dev/sdc on /dev/sdb drive, but with 5 linux distros. That aspect of my project I have covered, as I'm an experienced multi-booter. But the other part of my goal is for my partitioning on /dev/sdb to be optimally alligned just like is the case with /dev/sdc, and this is where I'm running into trouble.
ENVIRONMENT
I'm currently working from within my relatively fresh and upgraded install of Fedora LXDE, and the results I'm getting are fully repeatable in my also relatively fresh and upgraded install of Lubuntu as well.
REPORTED DISK PARAMETERS
[root@frank ~]# cat /sys/class/block/sdb/queue/physical_block_size
4096
[root@frank ~]# cat /sys/class/block/sdb/queue/logical_block_size
512
[root@frank ~]# cat /sys/class/block/sdb/queue/minimum_io_size
4096
[root@frank ~]# cat /sys/class/block/sdb/queue/optimal_io_size
33553920
[root@frank ~]# cat /sys/class/block/sdb/alignment_offset
0
[root@frank ~]# fdisk -l /dev/sdb
Disk /dev/sdb: 931.5 GiB, 1000204885504 bytes, 1953525167 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 33553920 bytes
Disklabel type: gpt
Disk identifier: 9428D9DB-746C-40CA-B189-060F92A10E3C
Device Start End Sectors Size Type
/dev/sdb1 65535 1953467279 1953401745 931.5G Linux filesystem
Partition 1 does not start on physical sector boundary.
[root@frank ~]#
PROBLEM
So it appears, based on the reporting of the physical block size, that the disk is 4k (advanced format) instead of 512b like the other drive, even though for backward compatibility purposes it is using a logical sector size of 512b. I can tell that GNU parted utility is assuming a block size of 512, because when it calculates the optimal IO interval
(optimal_io_size + alignment_offset) / physical_block_size = optimal_sector_interval
it gets a value of 65535, which is where it will automatically start the first partition, and the only way the align-check sub-utility will pass a partition alignment as optimal is if it starts on a multiple of 65535. The only way parted's result makes sense is if you consider that it is treating the physical_io_size as 512 instead of 4096
(33553920 + 0) / 512 = 65535.
However, parted understandably cannot use the 4096 block size, because then the equation would work out to
(33553920 + 0) / 4096 = 8191.875.
That answer would satisfy a highschool algebra teacher, but obviously makes no sense as a sector interval for which one would expect a discrete value (i.e. an integer!). In any case, because I want to make 12 partitions, some of which are as small as 256MiB in size, that's not possible to do in GNU Parted using percentages, and long story short I was only able to satisfy align-checks for optimal alignment sticking with 'unit s' and doing the modular arithmetic myself to ensure my partitions started at 65535s intervals, the way parted wanted me to. Based on my research, I didn't think it was as important to ensure my partitions also ended at those intervals, and hence I was left with gaps (obviously no larger than 65535) between most of my partitions.
Once again, parted thought my result was optimally aligned, treating the physical block size as 512 instead of 4096. But then after quitting parted and running 'fdisk -l /dev/sdb' I got contained within the output the following:
Partition 1 does not start on physical sector boundary.
Partition 2 does not start on physical sector boundary.
Partition 3 does not start on physical sector boundary.
Partition 4 does not start on physical sector boundary.
Partition 5 does not start on physical sector boundary.
Partition 6 does not start on physical sector boundary.
Partition 7 does not start on physical sector boundary.
Partition 8 does not start on physical sector boundary.
Partition 9 does not start on physical sector boundary.
Partition 10 does not start on physical sector boundary.
Partition 11 does not start on physical sector boundary.
Partition 12 does not start on physical sector boundary.
So, what parted likes, fdisk doesn't. So then I tried to use gParted to redo my partitioning scheme, letting it use 1 MiB as the unit size, and it started the first partition at 2048s, like you'd see on my other disk (/dev/sdc). fdisk was then happy and stopped complaining about sector alignment, but then GNU parted failed the align-check tests for optimal mode, although it would pass for the minimum mode.
I did find, however, that in both cases, mkswap (which I used to create a swap volume within the LVM I placed on /dev/sdb11) gave me the following warning:
[root@frank ~]# mkswap /dev/strange_quark_experimental/swap
mkswap: warning: /dev/strange_quark_experimental/swap is misaligned
So mkswap finds my swap volume to be misaligned whether parted thinks the disk is optimal aligned or minimum aligned, and mkswap also finds my swap volume misaligned whether fdisk is happy about alignment or not.
THEORIES
All this leaves me with the impression that I may have to ignore warnings from at least one disk reporting or partitioning utility, but I'm not confident which one. It's also possible that all reporting is unreliable to begin with as the USB-compatible enclosure containing the HDD might be misreporting at least one of the sector parameters. For instance, maybe it's not actually an AF drive? Or maybe it's optimal IO size is being misreported. Or maybe both? And, trust me, I've also considered the possibility that this is a PEBKAC case, as I might just be misunderstanding something about how to align partitions on a 4k drive. I'm not sure.
Whatever is going on, I will be happy moving forward with my actual Linux installations once I believe my partitions are optimal aligned and mkswap, or at least the utilities I should really be trusting the most, stop complaining about alignment.
HELP
Please help me understand why I can't seem to get parted and other disk utilities to agree on anything more than minimum alignment (achieved only when partitioning with either gParted or gdisk), and please advise me on whether I should really be worrying too much about the advantages of optimal alignment over minimum alignment in my case, as I won't waste further time if there is too insignificant a difference in performance or disk health. Otherwise, I would like to be able to take full advantage of my disk's advanced format benefits.
