|
Windows XP likes to "think" that FAT devices have 53 sectors per track, which makes a cylinder a multiple of 53 (NOT a power of two). Because all partitions start on a cylinder boundary, this causes misalignment between disk clusters and mmc erase block, causing wasteful read/modify/write operations across mismatched boundaries (which has the side effect of flashing each erase block TWICE). This was remedied in Windows 7, by using SSD-friendly 1MB alignment.
So, from an XP point of view, the device IS treated as having "cylinders", much to the detriment of performance (and extra write wear). And older linux drivers use "XP-style" FAT partition alignment...
|