On Tue, Sep 08, 2020 at 12:53:00PM -0400, rhkramer@gmail.com wrote:
Why start the first partition at 2 MIB, why not at any multiple of 4096 bytes that leaves room for whatever may need to be at the beginning of the disk (like maybe the MBR, or LILO, or ???)?
The current basic default is 1MByte. This is on a 512byte boundary, a 4kbyte boundary, and is relatively aligned with SSD erase blocks (typically 4MB or 16MB). It also is (IIRC) the windows default, so it's more likely that drive manufactuers have tested/optimized for that value than for any other. The default may be different in some cases, if the drive suggests a different alignment value. (E.g., on a RAID volume.) There's also simply no reason to choose a smaller value on a modern disk.