Dualboot archlinux/ubuntu on SSD, partition alignement is so fun

Hi people.
I just bought one of those shiny thing called SSD (a Crucial RealSSD C300 64GB) and planning to install Archlinux on it (along with Ubuntu as a test system for running my apps under it and as a backup system, you know for when I'll try the last feature in kernel26-git and will break every thing).
I setup the disk according Tso's numbers : H=225 S=56
I tried to align my partition by hand using a 512kiB and create the ext4 filesystems using :
mkfs.ext4 -b 4096 -E stride=128 /dev/sdaX
Frankly I think that I misunderstood the head/cylinder thing :
- I manage to install Ubuntu (I use it currently)
- but I can't assign partition to mount point in Archlinux installer: it complain about a partition that finishes half of a cylinder.
So my question are:
Should I realign my partition using H=32 S=32 or could I ignore the installer error and mounting the partition myself (and will I loose performances if I do so) ?
Bonus :
The Archlinux wiki page on SSD (http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/SSD … _Alignment) does advise to a blocksize of 4kiB and a stride of 128kiB when creating the filesystem. I think it would be nice to advertise on that and I'm willing to add that myself but I not so sure about SSD and partitions so comments are welcome.

Answering to myself and from the man page of ext4.
I was wrong in my previous post, maybe someone will need those informations later so I put them here :
It look like you need to customize block size and stride for raid only, so in my case I don't need it (don't remember where I read about that but I may have misunderstood something again). Furthermore it look like for a filesystem larger than 512MiB mke2fs will pickup a block size of 4kiB (as stated in the default section /etc/mk2fs.conf) of but I can't find much information on the -T usage_type parameter.
Can't someone correct me if I'm wrong ?

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Last edited by XDarkAngelX (2014-01-08 16:47:04)

Alber wrote:
I'm supposing a SSD.
From wiki:
Many of the common partition tools handle partition alignment automatically (assuming users are using an up-to-date version):
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/So … _Alignment
Edit:
About advance formatting
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Format
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Advanced_Format
For advanced format partitioning
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Ad … Partitions
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> Does anyone have anything to offer on this ?
>
> Would someone else mind checking the partition alignment on one of their
> imaged machines ?
>
> On 10/5/2010 1:33 PM, Chris Granitz wrote:
>> Some additional info...
>>
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>>
>>
>> On 10/5/2010 1:12 PM, Chris Granitz wrote:
>>> We are using ZCM 10.3.1 and the August 2010 Imaging CD to create and
>>> restore Windows 7 images to wiped conventional and solid state drives.
>>> We have been running the Windows 7 Experience Index tool to check disk
>>> performance. We are in the process of moving towards use of solid state
>>> drives and want to be sure we are getting the best possible performance.
>>> We have identical model laptops with the same SSD where some will score
>>> a 7.1 on the disk performance and others will score 5.9.
>>>
>>> In the process of doing more research on solid state drives, we came
>>> across some info that mentioned the need to have the partition aligned
>>> for best performance.
>>>
>>> So far we have found that if a laptop had Windows 7 installed directly
>>> to the solid state drive from the Windows 7 DVD, the partition is
>>> aligned (determined by taking the partition starting offset and dividing
>>> it by 4096 - result should be an integer if aligned). These laptops
>>> score at least a 6.9 on the Windows 7 disk performance test.
>>>
>>> On a laptop that had an image laid down using Zenworks the partition
>>> always ends up misaligned. These laptops typically score a 5.9 on the
>>> Windows 7 disk performance test.
>>>
>>> Has anyone else noticed a partition alignment problem when using
>>> Zenworks imaging ?
>>
>

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Dualboot archlinux/ubuntu on SSD, partition alignement is so fun

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