Date: Wed, 15 Jun 2011 11:20:34 -0400 From: Robert Simmons <rsimmons0@gmail.com> To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: SATA SDD cards Message-ID: <BANLkTimA9zObAVisuFep9zRZ95stTWR5Gw@mail.gmail.com> In-Reply-To: <4DF8C923.6010600@midsummerdream.org> References: <4DF8C923.6010600@midsummerdream.org>
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On Wed, Jun 15, 2011 at 11:00 AM, Rob <lists@midsummerdream.org> wrote: > Has anyone tried using an SATA SSD card (SATA add-on card that is a SSD > drive) in FreeBSD? =A0I was looking at an OCZ RevoDrive and was wondering= if > anyone had tried using one of those specifically, or any SATA SSD card in > general. I have not used a SATA SSD card, however, I might steer you away from OCZ. I have a regular SSD drive made by them. When I was partitioning the drive, I wanted to make sure that the partitions were aligned with the NAND cell size to maximize the performance of the drive. As you may know already the NAND cell size roughly translates to the "sector" size in HDDs. On many HDDs the sector size is 512 bytes, but on some newer drives it is 4K, so partitions need to start on 4K boundaries to be aligned properly. So, the same sort of thing is needed with SSD drives, but they are not all 4K, some are 1K, some are 8K etc. So, I delved deep into OCZs information about my drive online and I was not able to find information about the NAND cell size. I eventually called OCZ, and after a bit of back and forth the tech I was talked to went and asked his manager then came back and told me that he is not allowed to give out that information. He did tell me that he was told starting the partition at LBA 64 will make sure that the drive is aligned. This information helps in one sense, but since there are new options in gpart(8) in CURRENT that allow you to set the "sector" size to automatically align partitions properly this information does not help in the long run. Buy from a company that doesn't keep their drive specs a mystery.
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