New Western Digital EARS series drives - Bubba2 compatibile?

[jonj1]

I'm thinking of getting a larger HDD for my bubba2, and looking on Amazon there is a new line of WD Green drives - the WD??EARS series, eg.
http://www.amazon.com/Western-Digital-I ... 002ZCXJZE/

The customer reviews raise an important issue, which is the new "WD Advanced Format technology" appears to be causing a headache for WinXP users and someone with a linux DirectTV box. The new format is a move from 512b sector size to 4kb sectors size, since the previous WD??EADS series, which I think shiped with bubba2. Does anyone know if bubba2 is fine with 4kb sector sizes?

thanks,
Jon

[RandomUsername]

Support for the new format HDDs has been in the Linux kernel since September last year. I've actually no idea what version of the kernel the B2 is running and I'm not near mine to check but that should give you something to go on - source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8557144.stm

[jonj1]

My bubba2 is fully updated and running kernel 2.6.32.6, released in December 09, so 4k sector support should be there (probably since 2.6.31). Thanks for the starting point,

Jon

[jallee]

Hi!
I have also ordered a EARS disk from WD.
So now to my question, can the Bubba installer do a 8-sector alignment of the partitions at a new installation?
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/library/l-4kb-sector-disks/index.html?ca=dgr-lnxw074KB-Disksdth-LX#tools
Or do I do this manually via the command line before the installation?