Monday, March 01, 2021

4k sector disk on APU2 problems

Hi Misc!

Unfortunately I do not have one clear question here, but I wonder if somebody
could shed som light on some problems I have encountered on my PC Engines APU2.

It runs OpenBSD 6.7 from a 32 GB mSATA SSD disk, and I would like to change
the disk since it is a few years old now, so I buyed a 128 GB Kingston
mSATA SSD, and an mSATA -> SATA adapter and put that combo in an USB 2
external disk adapter.

The disk showed up as a 4k sector disk, and after installing OpenBSD 6.7
over USB over the mSATA-SATA adapter I plugged it in the internal mSATA
connector, and it did not boot.

Much fumbling later it seems that when the disk is connected to the
internal mSATA slot it is seen as a 512 bytes per sector disk. I do not
know what the BIOS thinks of it (factory SeaBIOS 1.10.something). When I
re-installed with the disk in the mSATA slot I got a bootable installation.
Both fdisk and disklabel now says the disk has got 512 bytes per sector.
(fdisk says nothing but for a 4k disk it should say it is a 4k disk)

My old 32 GB mSATA disk is readable over the mSATA-SATA adapter USB adapter
as a 512 bytes per sector disk.

Some time during my fumbling with the 120 GB disk in the mSATA slot, fdisk -v
claimed it could not read from sector 0, but the disklabel command could read
a disklabel. I think the disklabel then claimed the disk was a 4k sector disk.

So I am just curious about how to handle this disk. I can install to it
in the internal mSATA connector and read the old installation over the
mSATA-SATA-USB-adapter. But one day when I want to install to a new disk
again, I will not be able to read from the disk in the mSATA-SATA-USB-adapter,
so the next re-installation looks unpromising.

Some more specific questions:
* Would upgrading the BIOS be a good idea
* Sould upgrading to OpenBSD 6.8 improve the situation
* How is the disk sector size determined, and can I affect that?

Cheers!
--

/ Raimo Niskanen, Erlang/OTP, Ericsson AB

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