On Mon, Jul 25, 2011 at 1:10 PM, Les Mikesell <lesmikesell at gmail.com> wrote: > I've mentioned this problem before but put off doing anything about it > and maybe now someone can suggest the best solution. > > I have a 3-member RAID1 set where one of the members is periodically > swapped and rotated offsite. The filesystem contains a backuppc archive > which has millions of hardlinks that make it impractical to copy with a > file-oriented approach. The current filesystem is ext3 with one > partition that uses the entire disk capacity (no lvm). It works as is, > but... > > I'd like to use a laptop size drive for the swapped member and the only > ones available that match the size have 4k sectors. I have swappable, > trayless SATA bays available for both drive sizes. The problem is that > with the current partition layout, the drive with 4k sectors takes more > than a day to re-sync even though on read access the speed is a match > for the full sized drives that sync in a few hours. > > My questions for any filesystem experts are: > > Is there a way to adjust the existing md partitions to get the right > alignment for 4k sectors without having to do a file-oriented copy to > new partitions? A resize + a dd copy to shift the position might be > feasible time-wise if that would work. > > Is it worth converting to ext4? > > Is there a difference between doing this on 5.6 or 6.x? > > If I start over from scratch with 6.x, will the partitioning tools > automatically align for 4k sector drives (with/without lvm?)? > > -- > Les Mikesell > lesmikesell at gmail.com I've wondered many times, though haven't tried it, if the issues with hard links and backuppc could be solved by using a container file with a loopback mount, and then that file could be moved around as needed without running into hard-link issues. In this case, you could format the external drive in the optimal mode for 4k sectors, then create a container file and mount it using loopback. Then add the loopback device to the mdraid and have it sync. -☙ Brian Mathis ❧-