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How to Change the Logical Sector Size in Intel® Optane™ Solid State Drives (SSDs)

Content Type: Product Information & Documentation   |   Article ID: 000057964   |   Last Reviewed: 09/21/2023
Description Resolution Additional information

Description

Unable to determine the logical sector size of the drive.

Resolution

The logical sector size can be checked and changed using the Intel® Memory and Storage (Intel® MAS) Tool CLI.

Check the current logical sector size

  1. Run the command: intelmas show -all -intelssd <SSD_index>

This command will show all settings for the selected drive. The logical sector size is under the parameter SectorSize.

Change the logical sector size

  1. Run the command: intelmas start –intelssd <SSD_index> -nvmeformat LBAformat = (0-NumLBAFormats)

The parameter LBAformat specifies the sector size to set. Valid options are in the range from index 0 to the number of supported LBA formats of the NVMe drive, however the only sector sizes supported in Intel® Optane™ drives are 512B and 4096B which corresponds to indexes 0 and 3 respectively. This operation may also take an extended period of time depending on the device (10+ minutes), and may be necessary to increase the timeout while using other tools in Linux environments.

Key considerations
  • Variable Sector Size (VSS) is not supported. Therefore, other features that require a specific sector size are not supported either, such as Data Integrity Field (DIF) which requires a sector size of 520B. Generic Intel® Optane™ SSDs support only traditional 512B and 4096B sector sizes.
  • The command -nvmeformat required to change the sector size will also erase all data in the drive.
  • The command -nvmeformat also includes additional parameters that can configure different drive's settings such as Secure Erase, Protection Information, and Meta Data. Refer to the Intel® MAS Tool CLI User's Guide for more details.

Additional information

  • The Intel® Optane™ SSD P1600X Series supports both 512B (factory default) and 4096B sector size.
  • Intel® Optane™ drives take more time than NAND-based SSDs to complete the formatting process. The format time is associated with the drive's capacity and write performance.
  • Open source tools, such as nvme-cli in Linux*, support the option to specify the timeout value to make sure the Linux kernel will not time out the formatting job.
  • Some Linux tools may not support the timeout option, or the option may not work at all. Most recent Linux OSs (RHEL/SLES) should work as expected.
  • The Intel® Memory and Storage Tool does not support the timeout option.

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