[FEATURE ADDED] Add support for 4Kn Advanced Format disks


John_M

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4K native Advanced Format disks are the future and adding support for them would only enhance compatibility with today's 512e disks.

 

Please see this thread: https://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=45368.0 where I do some testing with a 4Kn disk and find encouragement as I prepare it for inclusion in an unRAID array, only to fall at the last hurdle when the array won't start, rejecting the disk silently.

 

I see no reason why 4Kn shouldn't be trivial to support as it's just a simplification of the 512e kludge.

 

Confirming that this feature was added in unRAID 6.4.0-rc8q.

 

Edited by John_M
Feature has been added, thank you!
  • Upvote 1
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  • 8 months later...

It has been 9 months and 6.2 has finally been released!  ;D

 

One can only assume that you guys at Limetech are now considering what will go into the next release. Is it too early to ask if 4kn drive support will be included?

 

How many devices out there are true 4kn?  Meaning the logical sector size == physical sector size == 4096?  I know there are some but seems to me these will fail in the marketplace because they are just not needed.  All it does it let the drive manufactures rip out the firmware that deals with 512e.  That firmware is written and mature, and besides all OS vendors (including us) have set things up so that partitions and file systems are aligned on 4K boundaries and use min 4K i/o anyway.  There is no technical reason anything has to change at this point.

 

That said, the feature is still on our 'todo' list but it's not very high on the list.  This can change if a large customer requires the support though  ;D

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  • 6 months later...

I'm not a large customer but I have just bought two 10Tb disks that is 4k native, and it's very misleading when you can use the disks with "unassigned devices" and when you try to add to the array it will not start the array, not a single message why, you can keep pressing the start button efter the page has reloaded. :(

 

I sure as hell want this feature as soon as possible, having bought two 10Tb disk that I can't use as intended make my stomach hurt.

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  • 1 month later...
29 minutes ago, -Daedalus said:

As someone who's probably going to be picking up a few 10TB disks in the near future: What? Can someone explain this? Why wouldn't those (or other) disks work with unRAID?

 

You can buy a 10TB disk, the majority of  disks are still 512e only, for those that exist in both options just make sure you choose the 512e variant, most (all?) models that are available with 4kn also are available with 512e.

Edited by johnnie.black
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  • 1 month later...
  • 3 weeks later...
4 hours ago, Jason N said:

It's pretty shady that this 512e requirement is not in the hardware requirement list or any of the official documentation. So glad I bought a Pro license and can't use my 10TB disks.

I agree that it's not good to have to search the forum for this info, but to be fair, limetech has a generous trial period before you are required to purchase a license. That trial period should be used to fully evaluate what you want to use before you spend the money.

 

I'm sure they will add 4kn support ASAP, but who knows how long it will actually take. There are MANY requests and modifications that are being worked on right now, and 4kn is on that list.

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  • 1 month later...
  • John_M changed the title to [FEATURE ADDED] Add support for 4Kn Advanced Format disks

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