Article ID: 000057964 Content Type: Product Information & Documentation Last Reviewed: 09/21/2023

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

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Summary

How to check and change the logical sector size in Intel® Optane™ SSDs using the Intel Memory and Storage Tool.

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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