*ARGH, all of this is busted-ish. The newest efforts work fine, but Windows cannot access the Linux partitions using the ext2 driver. Boo.*

[1] Linux - Tips, tweaks and alignment
- TO READ: [2] The first decent post...
  - one guy said: Propose adding recommendation of 'mke2fs ... -E stripe-width=128' for 512kB erase page block drives (vertex) or 'mke2fs ... -E stripe-width=32' for 128kB erase page block drives. (afaik everything else)

Geometry of my 2TB drives.

Cycles: 243201
Heads: 255 (default for fdisk)
Sectors: 63 (default for fdisk)

edit /etc/fstab with noatime .. and what about nodiratime?

When my own Vertex drive arrives, I'll be using fdisk -u to partition it, completely ignoring the antiquated CHS confusion. Much simpler that way, especially when there'll only be one or two partitions in total.

For a scheme with lots of partitions, it might be more convenient then to actually fiddle with the CHS parameters, though I doubt it.

Steps I've taken

cfdisk and create one large partition.
fdisk -lu /dev/sdg
- Learned the cycles/heads/sectors.
- Learned the starting sector.

Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sdg1              63  3907024064  1953512001   83  Linux

: Find the starting sector using sudo fdisk -lu. If it starts on a value that are an even multiple of 1024. Then you're ready to proceed.

Huh?? I have "63".

: sudo mke2fs -t ext4 -E stripe-width=128 /dev/sda1

: Since the default file system sector size is 4kB, stripe-width=128 will result in 512kB alignment. The file system will now try to align each write at the start of an empty erase block.

: sda1 indicates that we want to create our file system on the first partition on /dev/sda.

I experimented with fdisk -H 32 -S 32 /dev/sdg to get 512KB alignment. I was forced to start at cylinder 3. When goofing around some more, I was able to start at cylinder 2 with fdisk -H 8 -S 16 /dev/sdg.

Cylinder size (Times 512k):

1024K (x2)
 -S 16 -H 128
 -S 32 -H 64
512K (x1)
 -S 8 -H 128
 -S 16 -H 64
 -S 32 -H 32
256K (x0.5)
 -S 4 -H 128
 -S 8 -H 64
 -S 16 -H 32
 -S 32 -H 16
128K (x0.25)
 -S 2 -H 128
 -S 4 -H 64
 -S 8 -H 32
 -S 16 -H 16
 -S 32 -H 8
64KB (recommended for Windows)
 -S 16 -H 8

fdisk -H 8 -S 16 /dev/sdg
WARNING: DOS-compatible mode is deprecated. It's strongly recommended to
         switch off the mode (command 'c') and change display units to
         sectors (command 'u').
c
DOS Compatibility flag is not set
n
Command action
   e   extended
   p   primary partition (1-4)
p
Partition number (1-4): 
1
First cylinder (17-30523665, default 17): 
(enter)
Last cylinder, +cylinders or +size{K,M,G} (2-30523665, default 30523665): 
+8G
n
Command action
  e   extended
  p   primary partition (1-4)
e
Partition number (1-4): 
2
First cylinder (131089-30523665, default 131089): 
(enter)
Last cylinder, +cylinders or +size{K,M,G} (131089-30523665, default 30523665): 
30523665
n
Command action
  l   logical (5 or over)
  p   primary partition (1-4)
l

+128000

First cylinder (128034-30523665, default 128034): 
(enter)
Last cylinder, +cylinders or +size{K,M,G} (128034-30523665, default 30523665): 
+591949
n
Command action
  l   logical (5 or over)
  p   primary partition (1-4)
l
First cylinder (720000-30523665, default 720000): 
(enter)
Last cylinder, +cylinders or +size{K,M,G} (720000-30523665, default 30523665): 
+96001
n
l
First cylinder (816018-30523665, default 816018): 
(enter)
+128000
n
l
First cylinder (944035-30523665, default 944035): 
(enter)
Last cylinder, +cylinders or +size{K,M,G} (944035-30523665, default 30523665): 
+32753

+4577070
and then the rest...

w
The partition table has been altered!

Calling ioctl() to re-read partition table.
Syncing disks.

WARNING: DOS-compatible mode is deprecated. It's strongly recommended to

switch off the mode (command 'c') and change display units to
sectors (command 'u').

Command (m for help): c DOS Compatibility flag is not set