[Bug 583790] Re: Ubuntu 10.04 and Western DIgital's new Advanced Format SATA drives - constant drive errors

[Maxime R.]

Hi, i have the exact same drive. I spent a lot of time investigating how AF is supported after reading so much about people complaining about the bad performance of these drives. Many even returned their hdd after buying them.
I can say that a stock install of ubuntu 11.04 doesn't correctly align the partitions. In fact this drive doesn't correctly report its physical block size (claiming 512B instead of 4096 in /sys/block/sda/queue/physical_block_size).

As said in this article (http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/library/l-4kb-sector-disks/):
"In practice, however, the physical block size information is spurious, at least for the first generation of Western Digital Advanced Format drives. Unfortunately, this means that disk utilities cannot properly detect the presence of such disks."

In fact, while installing ubuntu with default options, it _seemed_ slower (installing, upgrading packages, etc.). I made some benchmarks to sort this out: http://openbenchmarking.org/result/1106082-MAXR-AFHDDAL95
So, while the reading speed isn't really affected, random writes were in some cases almost 3x slower.

Manually partitioning the HDD with gparted and the "align to MiB" option
while creating the partitions solved the problem.

I think the easiest fix would be to always use parted with the "-a
optimal" option when partitioning the system during an install of
ubuntu. (i don't think we still really care about wasting the first MB
of our HDD). Hope this helps.

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/583790

Title:
  Ubuntu 10.04 and Western DIgital's new Advanced Format SATA drives -
  constant drive errors

Status in “ubiquity” package in Ubuntu:
  New

Bug description:
  I recently bought a Western Digital WD10EARS 1 TB SATA drive.

  This WD drive incorporates what is called "Advanced Format" on the
  drive:

  See:
  http://www.google.com/url?q=http://www.wdc.com/wdproducts/library/WhitePapers/ENG/2579-771430.pdf&sa=X&ei=1H_2S8P9FYP78AavgNHECg&ved=0CB8QzgQoADAA&usg=AFQjCNHRHKOzE52JvyZZRvoYX3BiOoYsDw

  I tried to install Ubuntu 10.04 on it.
  The installation kept reporting errors related to the drive during installation.
  The installation took quite a bit longer than usual.
  After installation Ubuntu would boot but again various drive errors kept being reported.

  I thought this might have been a 'bad' HD so I returned it and got the
  same model as a replacement.

  Went through the same process... same results.

  Re-downloaded Ubuntu (just in case) and reburned a new CD (just in case)
  Tried to install Ubuntu 10.04 again... same results.

  So I returned the 2nd HD and paid a restocking fee to exchange for a
  Seagate SATA drive which works just fine.

  As far as I can tell the only difference was this new Advanced Format
  on the WD drive which the Seagate (and my other Hitachi HD's do not
  implement).

  Given the errors, I'm not sure if this is a BIOS compatibility problem a WD implementation issue or an Ubuntu issue but I wanted to report it.
  --- 
  Architecture: amd64
  DistroRelease: Ubuntu 10.04
  InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 10.04 "Lucid Lynx" - Beta amd64 (20100318)
  Package: ubiquity (not installed)
  ProcEnviron:
   PATH=(custom, no user)
   LANG=en_US.utf8
   SHELL=/bin/bash
  ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.32-16.25-generic
  Tags: lucid
  Uname: Linux 2.6.32-16-generic x86_64
  UserGroups:

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