ZFS, 512e and 4KN drives

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loxsmith

New Member
Jun 12, 2019
10
2
3
I'm looking to put 6 drives, 8TB, in a ZFS Raid Z2. Should I look at 512e or 4kn drives?

Looking at Seagate Ironwolf. (NE=pro drives). I've found five different current models, so it's quite confusing!

This is for a home office development box.

"512E" (512B emulated)
ST8000VN004
ST8000NE001
ST8000NE0004

"4KN" (4K native)
ST8000VN0022
ST8000NE0021

Which is best for ZFS (ashift=12 vdevs) ?
(OpenZFS on Linux)

Advantages of 512e vs 4kn ?

Thanks!
 

redeamon

Active Member
Jun 10, 2018
291
207
43
No difference between 512e vs 4kn with ZFS. Just make sure your pool is ashift=12 for 4k sector size and the overhead of 512e will vanish as the drive is seen as 4kn.
 
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