From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Mon Nov 15 15:04:41 2010 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 26F6D1065675 for ; Mon, 15 Nov 2010 15:04:41 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from lists@midsummerdream.org) Received: from smtpauth03.prod.mesa1.secureserver.net (smtpauth03.prod.mesa1.secureserver.net [64.202.165.183]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with SMTP id CC7868FC1A for ; Mon, 15 Nov 2010 15:04:40 +0000 (UTC) Received: (qmail 20998 invoked from network); 15 Nov 2010 14:37:59 -0000 Received: from unknown (70.131.80.44) by smtpauth03.prod.mesa1.secureserver.net (64.202.165.183) with ESMTP; 15 Nov 2010 14:37:59 -0000 Message-ID: <4CE145C5.8040602@midsummerdream.org> Date: Mon, 15 Nov 2010 08:37:57 -0600 From: Rob User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10.6; en-US; rv:1.9.2.12) Gecko/20101027 Thunderbird/3.1.6 MIME-Version: 1.0 To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Subject: ZFS and 4k sector drives X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list Reply-To: lists@midsummerdream.org List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Mon, 15 Nov 2010 15:04:41 -0000 I'm trying to figure out how, if it's possible, to make the 4k sector drives work with ZFS raidz2 pools. It seems that most of the 4k sector drives are using emulation, and reporting 512 byte sectors to the OS instead of their native 4k size. I know someone who had an issue trying to insert one of these drives into a running ZFS pool with other 512 byte sector drives with bad results. At one point I was told that it might be possible to use geli to specify the sector size (4k) and add those geli devices to a ZFS pool. I've even seen mention of using gnop. Does anyone know how well either solution works? Is there a known way to get these 4k sector drives to work in ZFS raidz2? In addition to that, how does ZFS handle drives with different sector sizes? Can I have a pool with 512 byte and 4k sector drives, or should all drives in a pool have the same sector size? Rob