Partitionless RAID5 on Linux w/ 4k sectors

[Gambit]

I'm working on setting up a RAID-5 software array in Linux and unsure on how to handle 4k sectors with the drives I'm using (Samsung F4's HD204UI's). I've read that you can either set up partitions based on 4k sectors, or you can just forgo the partitions entirely and put the data directly on the drive and not worry about the 4k sectors. I know if you ignore placing partitions on the drives, it will impact performance negatively... how does not having partitions change this?

 

[drescherjm]

I believe that would avoid the problem since the array would start on the first sector and your stripe size would be a multiple of 4K.

BTW, creating aligned partitions on linux is not that difficult. Install gdisk. Create GPT partitions. They will be aligned to 2048 sectors by default on large disks. However I go into the expert mode by typing x in the menu and set the partitions to 8 sector boundaries then return to the main menu (type m) to create the partitions.

 

[Gambit]

It wasn't so much a "I don't want to do this because it's difficult" issue, it was (from what I understand) just easier and less problematic when later expanding the raid array to not have to extend the partition, then the extend the array. Instead, you add the drive to the array and just extend the array. I can't think of any downside to *not* having a partition on the drive. I just wanted to make sure I wasn't misreading something and setting things up wrong.