Hard drives are about to undergo one of the biggest changes in the format 30 years ago.
By early 2011, all disks are an advanced format, “that changes how they use during the backup of the data and save the people on them. The conversion to the extended format makes it easier to spend on the hard disk manufacturers to larger drives, less power and produce more reliable.
However, it could mean problems for Windows XP users to change an old drive for a change to the format.
Error Codes
Since the days of the venerable DOS operating system, was the large space on a hard drive formatted in blocks of 512 bytes. The 512-byte sector has been standardized by IBM, which they used on floppy disks. While 512 bytes was useful when hard drives were only a few megabytes in size, it makes little sense when drives can apply one terabyte (1,000 gigabytes) or more of data.
The 512-byte format comes from the days of the floppy disk. “The technology has changed, but that the basic building block of the formatting is not,” said David Burks, a product marketing manager for the storage company Seagate.
This fine resolution on the hard drives is causing the problem, he said, because of the wasted space associated with each small block. Each 512-byte sector has shown a mark where it begins and dedicated a room for storing error correction code. In addition, a small gap between the different sectors has to be released. The large drives, not this wasted space in which data can be saved to take a significant part of the drive.
Moving to a modern form of 4K sectors, about eight times less space wasted, but also allows drives to devote twice as much space per block of error correction. “You can be in a corner, where you can not push a lot more on the hard drive,” said Steve Perkins, a technical consultant for Western Digital.
This shift may also make manufacturers more efficient use of real estate on a hard disk. “We can get more data on the disk,” he said. “It is about 7-11% more efficient than one format.”
Slow down
Through the International Disk Drive Equipment and Materials Association (IDEMA) all decision makers must drive the adoption of the enlarged 4K format required by the end of January 2011. HDD makers have a training and awareness campaign so that people know about the expanded format and the problems it could for the use of older operating systems such as warning causing Windows XP to start.
This is because, decided that Windows XP prior to the 4K format was published. “The 512-byte sector assumption is embedded in many aspects of computer architecture,” said Mr. Burks from Seagate.
In contrast, release, Windows 7, Vista, OS X Tiger, Leopard, Snow Leopard, and versions of the Linux kernel, after September 2009, all are aware of 4K. In order to cope with Windows XP, advanced-format drives can pretend to still use 512 byte sectors in size.
When reading data from one drive this emulation will go unnoticed. However, Mr. Burks, in some situations, the writing of data could the performance hit. In some cases, the drive will take two steps to not write data as one and the introduction of a lag of about 5 milliseconds.
“Everything will be in all, a significant reduction in hard drive performance,” Mr. Burks said, adding that under certain circumstances, it could be a drive 10% slower. Are in an effort to minimize the deformity, hard drive manufacturer produces software that provides 512 Sectors line with 4K. The most commonly-seen performance problems that are building their own computers or replace an old drive for a that the new format.
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