# [SOLVED] Using drives with 520 byte sectors

## rickvernam

I occasionally come across drives with 520 byte sectors that I'd like to utilize - sometimes in FC Arrays, other times as IBM SCSI, etc.

I do not want to change the sector size to 512, so never mind any thing to change sector size.

I've enabled CONFIG_BLK_DEV_INTEGRITY in the kernel, which I am under the impression is related to 520-byte sector drives.

Still, whenever I connect the drives I get unsupported sector size, or whatever the exact error message is.

So does anybody have particular experience with this?  Are special HBAs required, or something else?

Thanks,

-RickLast edited by rickvernam on Sun Feb 13, 2011 6:28 am; edited 1 time in total

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## TJNII

Last time I researched this I came to the conclusion that disks must have 512 byte sectors on Linux.  That number is currently too deeply ingrained in the kernel to change easily, so nobody has.  I wasn't able to find a solution.

The only quick fix I can think of is a hardware RAID controller, as they may use the extra 8 bytes for RAID data and present the disks as 512 byte disks.  Otherwise you're probably SOL.

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## aCOSwt

 *rickvernam wrote:*   

> I've enabled CONFIG_BLK_DEV_INTEGRITY in the kernel, which I am under the impression is related to 520-byte sector drive
> 
> 

 

Your impression is correct as CONFIG_BLK_DEV_INTEGRITY makes that a checksum is written to the same sector as the data. For that to be possible, the sector size must be increased by the size of the checksum = 8 bytes !

BTW, not all drives can accept that.

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## rickvernam

What I've discovered is that the drives are accessible, but I guess applications have to be written specifically to handle them.

For example, I can't access a 520-byte sector drive via hexedit /dev/sda0 or /dev/sg0...but I can write an application and use SG_IO no problem.

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