zpool with only 512n drives

[vicmarto]

Hello.

I plan to make a zpool consisting exclusively of 512n drives (native 512 drives, from Seagate). Should I force it fo ashift 9 or ashift 12? Thanks!

 

[mav@]

ashift 9 may allow some better space efficiency when storing small data blocks, especially if wider RAIDZ is used, where each logical block has to be split between number of drives. But on the other side use of RAIDZ to store small blocks is not good for performance reasons, since each top-level vdev there has IOPS of single drive. So I would say that ashift 9 is OK, but I would not expect dramatic benefits.

 

[Patrick M. Hausen]

And if you ever replace your drives with 4k ones, you will regret it ;)

Patrick