RE: Wheezy Installer Auto-Partition Oddity
> From: Bonno Bloksma [mailto:b.bloksma@tio.nl]
> To: Patrick Bartek; debian-user@lists.debian.org
> Hi Patrick,
>
> > In preparation of a clean install of Wheezy, I did a test install in
VirtualBox
> 3.1.8 running under Fedora 12 64-bit.
> > To save time, I used the installer's default partitioning scheme.
Normally I
> custom partition.
> > Anyway, I noticed an oddity: There are gaps between the
> partitions. Sizable ones.
> > Plus, sda1 starts at 2048, not 1. I don't know if this is due to the
installer
> partitioner or a quirk in VirtualBox.
> > I noticed this on a VB install of Debian 6, too, on the same
> system. Anybody got any ideas on the why? Wasn't able to find anything
> applicable on net searches.
>
> The only reason I can think about is the new requirement for partitioning
> on 4k boundaries due to new harddrive specs. Harddrives used to be broken
> up in 512b blocks, they are now chopped up in 4k blocks. I read a good
> article the other day explaining the performance hits if the OS does not
> properly allign the partition boundaries to the new 'Advanced Format' 4k
> boundaries. Unfortunately that was in a paper magazine so I cannot refer
to
> it here. But have a look at
> http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/advanced-format-4k-sector-size-
> hard-drive,2759.html and look in Wikipedia for more info.
>
> Bonno Bloksma
If you are using LVM, you need to leave 1MB before and after the partition
for metadata. Some of the tools do this automatically for you. If you
don't like it, you can manually adjust the start and end yourself.
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