Why is my physical sector size is different than the logical sector size? [duplicate]

Question

I used fsutil in windows to find out the sector info about my volumes. I have two hard disk one is SSD while the other one is typical magnetic tape hard disk.

The SSD drive volume C have both logical and physical sector size as 512.

C:\Windows\system32>fsutil fsinfo sectorinfo C:
LogicalBytesPerSector :                                 512
PhysicalBytesPerSectorForAtomicity :                    512
PhysicalBytesPerSectorForPerformance :                  512
FileSystemEffectivePhysicalBytesPerSectorForAtomicity : 512
Device Alignment :                                      Aligned (0x000)
Partition alignment on device :                         Aligned (0x000)
No Seek Penalty
Trim Supported
Not DAX capable
Not Thinly-Provisioned

However, my magnetic Hard disk have logical sector size 512 and physical sector size 4096.

C:\Windows\system32>fsutil fsinfo sectorinfo G:
LogicalBytesPerSector :                                 512
PhysicalBytesPerSectorForAtomicity :                    4096
PhysicalBytesPerSectorForPerformance :                  4096
FileSystemEffectivePhysicalBytesPerSectorForAtomicity : 4096
Device Alignment :                                      Aligned (0x000)
Partition alignment on device :                         Aligned (0x000)
Performs Normal Seeks
Trim Not Supported
Not DAX capable
Not Thinly-Provisioned

My SSD has a GPT partition style while the Magnetic Hard disk have a MBR partition style.

Why is there difference in logical and physical size for one volume not the other one and what does it indicate?

Answer 1

Why is there difference in logical and physical size for one volume not the other one and what does it indicate?

Although the response of your fsutil command shows data below a partition/volume label ("C" or "G" in your case) logical and physical sector sizes are properties of your drive. The C- and G-partition only inherited that information.

The difference exists because hard drive manufacturers decided to increase the sector size from 512 byte to 4096 bytes. Once problems arised they heeled the issue by continuing using the new sector size of 4096 bytes internally but showed 512 bytes per sector externally at the interface.

This indicates that you should be careful to align partitions on physical sector boundaries. Legacy OS such as Windows XP tried to align partitions on cylinder boundaries which would easily result in the lack of alignment. An alignment mismatch increases wear and decreases performance. Current (12.11.2021) partitioning tools do set partition boundaries correctly to avoid misalignments.