SD card image should be aligned to 4MB

[Pali]

For optimizing performance of SD cards all partitions should begins at position N * 4MB (where N is integer). This is because of typical size of SD card chip erase block is 4MB. Standard partition utilities (like fdisk, gparted) auto align partitions to 1MB.

Now first partition of Raspbian image from http://www.raspbian.org/PiscesImages starts at 1MB (should at 4MB).

See also:
https://lwn.net/Articles/428584/
https://wiki.linaro.org/WorkingGroups/Kernel/Projects/FlashCardSurvey

[Lauri Koponen (ladoga)]

I think this is fairly important as without proper alignment pages will go across block boundaries and give a performance hit. (you get several write operations when just one would be needed)

Fixing it might give a good performance boost. (someone willing to benchmark?)

[peter green (plugwash)]

I doubt this will make any difference, the data at the start of a partition is pretty static and the filesystem block size for ext4 is only 4kB but i'm willing to be convinced to the contary.

Also there are currently no plans to release new pisces images.