Hi All;
Can someone give me some guidance on partitioning a 4TB drive into one partition ?

My goal is to align the partition for best performance. I searched the net for advice and I've found a lot of information on it but am still confused.

After setting the label to gpt,

I tried mkpart primary 0% 100%
and I get the warning that the partition isn't aligned

then I tried mkpart primary 1 -1 (which I really hoped would get me completed)

and when I do an align-check on partition 1, it reports 1 aligned

but then when I do an fdisk -l,
I get the warning that partition 1 does not start on a physical sector boundary

I read that sector size is usually 512 bytes but on some (or perhaps all) larger disks, the sector size is 4096.

I am really not knowledgable in this area and not sure if the above message about partition 1 not starting on a physical sector boundary is important or what impact this will have to my performance. Since these 4tb drives are being used in a media server, I'd like them to be as fast and efficient as possible.

Can you offer some guidance or perhaps some commands on how to partition my (full) 4tb drive into one partition so it is aligned and also so the partition table starts on a physical sector boundary ?

Also, is there a Ubuntu utility to display the sector size of a disk?

I have been researching this issue off and on for a few weeks and would like to finally get this partitioning completed this weekend so I can get on with setting up my system.

Thanks.

Tim

fdisk doesn't always output accurate information on GPT disks so you might try using GParted which should be on the Ubuntu installation medium or parted. I don't use GPT myself so can't give any more detail.

If parted says it's aligned, believe it. In future use "-a optimal" when starting parted.

Forgot to answer this - parted will list this data. Issue "p" in interactive mode, or

Hi syg00;
I actually did use -a optimal when starting parted ... I just left this out in an effort not to make my message too wordy :-).

Here are the commands I used ... that I finally found doing an extensive search ...

parted -a optimal /dev/sdb
GNU Parted 2.3
Using /dev/sdb
Welcome to GNU Parted! Type 'help' to view a list of commands.
(parted) mklabel gpt
(parted) mkpart primary 1 -1
(parted) align-check
alignment type(min/opt) [optimal]/minimal? optimal
Partition number? 1
1 aligned
(parted) quit

Tim

sug00 (and others);
I tried the command to list the sector size and I get

sector size (logical/physical) 512B/4096b

Does this means that my partitioning is using 512b sectors but my disk actually uses 4096b? With one disk and one partition, shouldn't these be the same ? Should I be concerned with the discrepancy ?

Also, before setting the filesystem and before formatting, parted reports a file size of 4001gb - and yet my disk is 4tb - Does this seem correct ?

Tim

Quick search found this - seems pretty good.

No, you don't need to be concerned. Was a (potential) problem when the advanced format disks first came out, but the utilities accommodate them now. Alignment may cause some (a couple of megabytes) wasted space - don't worry, be happy ...

Great link, syg00 and thanks for all of your great advice today and in the past.

Tim

I disagree.
Your partitions should start and end on a multiple of 4KB - if not a disk write - even of 4KB - means reading two adjacent 4KB sectors and rewriting portions of the adjacent sectors.

I meant at the (very) begining, and potentially the very end of the disk - outside of allocated space.