[mythtv-users] Does MythDora-12 support advanced format drives?

[Don Brett]

Jarod Wilson wrote:
> On Fri, Jun 18, 2010 at 8:27 PM, Don Brett <dlbrett at zoominternet.net> wrote:
>   
>> I built a brand new MythDora box with a Western Digital 1TB drive (model
>> WD10EARS).  It uses advanced formating (4k physical sectors), but now I'm
>> not so sure it's supported yet in Fedora.  Does anyone know if it is...or if
>> not, any suggestions?
>>
>> Here's a couple of threads I came across (they imply it's not supported
>> until Fedora-13):
>>
>> http://fedoraforum.org/forum/showthread.php?t=240404&highlight=WD10EARS
>> http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.utilities.util-linux-ng/2926
>>     
>
> Thread says 2.6.31+ and either a new enough util-linux-ng or parted
> are sufficient. Fedora 12 is fine on the kernel side, not certain on
> the userspace side. It *can* be done w/older parted, but requires a
> bit of manual work partitioning the drive to make sure you get proper
> alignment. Anaconda may do that for you already anyway, but I'm not
> sure. Newer parted has a -a/--align flag that definitely gets it
> right, and is definitely available in Fedora 13. Even an updated build
> being available for F12 wouldn't help though if it is indeed required
> for Anaconda to get things right, since its the parted built into the
> installer image that Anaconda uses. So all that to say... It might
> work, it might not. :)
>
> A thought though... Start up an F13 installer. Partition the disk as
> you want to use it w/MythDora. Restart the machine and boot the
> MythDora 12 installer. Instead of repartitioning, use the existing
> partitions, which should all be properly aligned. Proceed w/the rest
> of the install as normal.
>
>   
That sounded like a great idea, so I gave it a try, but got stuck.  I 
used the live-cd version of f-13 and selected the "install to hard disk" 
icon after it loaded.  The installation did everything very 
automatically.  It actually did the entire install before I caught it, 
so I had to start over and hit the reset button immediately after the 
formats finished.  The format looked very similar to the md-12 format.  
It did the same motions and took about the same time...I think it did 
the same thing as md-12.

I got the partitioning and formatting done with Fedora-13, went back to 
md-12 and walked through the standard installation steps, but there was 
no selection to use the existing partitioning; I tried every 
combination.  I would have sworn I had seen that selection some time ago.

By the way, I don't know that this installation is actually bad.  MD-12 
install and runs fine, but has a weird slow-down (about 50% of the 
time).  When it's fast, it's pretty fast...when it's slowed-down, it's 
really slow.  It's a lot like the other threads were describing.

The first time I installed md-12 on this machine, it warned me that 
there was something wrong with the disk and offered to fix it, which I 
let it do.  I just assumed it had something to do with the advanced 
formatting feature.  The installation went fine after that.  I later 
noticed the lags and started looking into it.  Is there a way to tell if 
it's right?