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(there's a undetectable fault error rate, something along the lines of 1 in 10^20 bytes read or so will have an undetected error)

I just want to call this out because it's so important. That number, 10^20, sounds big, but considering the size of modern drives it's really not.

Randomly picking the WD 8TB Red NAS drive (WD60EFRX), which is designed for consume RAID as an example:

The spec sheet says the URE (unrecoverable read error) rate is at worst 1 x 10^14 per bits read. However, that drive holds 8 x 10^12 bytes! If you were to read every single byte there is about a 64% chance that at least 1 bit is read incorrectly.

(8 x 8 (bits per byte) x 10^12) / (1 x 10^14) = 64,000,000,000,000 / 100,000,000,000,000 = 0.64

Correct my math if I'm wrong, but this should make anyone think twice about using any kind of RAID as a "backup" solution. If you have a disk fail you have a better than 50/50 chance of introducing corrupt data during the rebuild process!

Frankly, ZFS-style checksumming is the future of files systems. It has to be for any data you care about.

Two platters have twice as much contact with the air around them.

What do you think suspends the head above the platter, against the force of the spring/arm holding it down? Air is forced under it by the surface of the platter..

Here's a random datasheet http://www.wdc.com/wdproducts/...
Idle power between 8.6W and 4.4W. They're all the same physical size, the same series, same RPM, same cache size, same interface.
Guess what the difference is? Number of platters and number of heads. There's also 4dB difference in noise level.

The largest power consumer of a modern hard drive is the motor spinning the platters, overcoming the friction of air against them. The platters are basically a Telsa Turbine - a bladeless turbine that's constructed from smooth spinning discs.

I just wait for someone to start selling "your new, own personal cloud to put in your home!!" devices.

Like this?
Or this?
Or maybe this?

My server spec's likely won't be helpful for you. One of the SSD's alone would pretty much use up your budget. Here are the details anyway:

Intel S2600CP Motherboard
2 of E5-2620 v2 @ 2.10GHz
64GB of DDR3L 1600MHz RAM
1000W Power Supply
Intel RMS25KB040 RAID Controller
AXXCBL740MS7P RAID/SAS Cable Kit
2 of 500GB SATA HDD in RAID1 for OS/Boot
2 of Intel 750 Series PCIe 1.2TB SSD for VM storage

Software installed includes:
VMware ESXi 6.0.0
Intel-nvme-1.0e.1.1-1OEM.550.0.0.1391871.x86_64.vib
Scsi-mpt2sas-20.00.00.00.1vmw-1OEM.550.0.0.1331820.x86_64.vib
Vmware-esx-provider-lsiprovider.vib

Unfortunately it actually spins down the disk, complete with a 1 second latency penalty on next access. There's a tool to remove this "feature" but it doesn't support the specific drive I had.

yes, a duopoly of WD and Seagate. at least in 3.5" disk market.

http://www.wdc.com/en/company/...

3.5" toshiba drives are pretty much WD with Toshiba's firmware and branding.

Even Western Digital is doing it. What gives?

That said, perhaps DropBox could sell a self-hosted version of their software and bring over their ease-of-use.

That's already been done.

The challenge DropBox faces with a self-hosted iteration of its software is that it stops being 'simple'. Existing Dropbox clients would have to be completely rewritten to go from asking "username and password, please" to "username, password, server address, and port, please". Even if we hand-wave away that problem by assuming that users can either correctly type a server name and port number, or that Dropbox will still have 'accounts' but essentially become a DynDNS clone and simply handle network traversal and matching users to their data repositories, we then have to deal with the Dropbox Server software. There may be a market for Dropbox to sell drives like these, but I don't see Western Digital wanting to partner with Dropbox to provide redundant functionality to their existing apps, and I don't see consumers paying more for a Dropbox branded drive if they're already in the "self-contained NAS" market - a handful might, but now Dropbox, for all intents and purposes, finds itself with all the challenges of being an external hard drive vendor...with the added bonus of directly competing with the vendors from whom they're sourcing their parts.

The obvious alternative to this would be for them to sell their software and let it run on a LAMP/WAMP stack, on whatever hardware is on hand, and market it to the enthusiast/enterprise market, like UnRAID or Nexenta. That might be a short term win, especially if they do some fancy stuff with LDAP/Active Directory integration. Conversely, I see it potentially being a support nightmare based on how it deals with storage. Will it install on an Ubuntu desktop containing a hodgepodge of hard disks? Would it be more like FreeNAS where it makes its own software RAID, but requires hardware to be dedicated (or its own VM)? Even at that, how do they bill for the software? One-time use seems like it wouldn't be a good long-term plan, but I don't see too many users being okay with Dropbox charging them an annual fee to use their own hard drives. CALs could be a useful method (arguably the most workable one), but they'd have a hard time managing their consumer-friendly image on one hand with Oracle-style licensing on the other.

Levie is right; 'free' isn't a business model. Dropbox's 2GB number is only sustainable because they're betting that a certain number of those users will go for a paid tier. Either every Dropbox customer will pay, or they start advertising, or they data mine. To my knowledge, those are the three business models that have sustained themselves on the internet. 'Everyone Pays' may be a viable model if Dropbox can do things like sell gift cards for their service (for users unable/unwilling to fork over their Mastercard) and come up with the right formula of how much customers are really willing to pay for storage+ubiquity+simplicity. Although Levie must certainly be feeling the pinch from Microsoft's 1TB of OneDrive for $60/year, the one client we attempted to migrate to that service went back to dropbox VERY quickly because the desktop client was utter crap; I'm left to believe that Dropbox's simplicity still has an edge just yet. Conversely, I don't think that $50/month for 500GB is worthwhile, either - That's only slightly less than it'd cost to buy a 500GB hard disk outright from Newegg every month.

Dropbox is still a well-recognized brand that I'm certain many consumers are still willing to pay a premium for, and Microsoft and Google are competing not only with more storage for less money, but with integration as well - editing a spreadsheet in Sheets or Excel and seamless saving of attachments is not the kind of thing that Dropbox can effectively compete with.

Skip the Pi and get a WD MyBook Live instead http://www.wdc.com/en/products.... It's got 1gbit networking, 1-4TB sized hard drives, a power PC processor and runs Linux. Mine has been slurping torrents off the net happily for the last 6 months. These cost a little more than the same sized hard drive with only USB3 but more than make up for it with utility and speed. You can run a web server on them, they have one installed already in fact.

Here's an example:
It's the document for their "Universal Firmware Updater"
http://support.wdc.com/downloa...

Want to know what the firmware update does for your specific product. Good luck with that... maybe it's documented on some obscure forum somewhere, but Ain't Nobody Got Time for That!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...

I won't even go into their moronic backup software, referred to, ambiguously, as SmartWare. So, the idea that they are competent to run a cloud based service is suspect at best. engineers should stick to engineering, and leave to internet to imagineers.

What about the WD Dual Drive?

Sounds like you want a WD TV Live. It can mount NFS & SMB, and act as an SMB server as well, sharing any attached HD. It has played every downloaded video file I've thrown at it.

Try the WD TV Live. I have one, and it's awesome. Plays MKV files ripped straight from a Blu-Ray.

I really like my WD TV Live. It plays a lot of formats and has a simple but usable interface. It definitely passed the "wife test" for ease-of-use. But it has one glaring omission: no Amazon Prime streaming (see: "Online Services"). They just released a 2.0 firmware update with a bunch of new "supports [service]" notes, but Amazon is not one of them. Western Digital, I am disappoint.

Bitrot is a myth in modern times. Floppies and cheap-ass tape drives from the 90s had this problem, but anything reasonably modern (GMR) will read what you wrote until mechanical failure.

Oh, really? Is that why drive manufacturers specify a non-recoverable read error rate - typically on the order of 1 bit per 100 terabits? Let's see now. A single 4TB drive contains 32 terabits of data. So if you have three of them, either in a RAID or separately, and you try to read the entire contents, you can expect an average of one bit to be rotted permanently and lost forever. Or that bad bit could happen a lot earlier. Conceivably the first bit you try to read. Or the one millionth. And that is not considered a failed drive. You can't magically guard against these by verifying the recorded data one time, either a nominal portion or even in its entirety.

RAR's checksums will only detect errors that happen to occur when you test read the RAR archive. They won't repair it, and testing OK is no guarantee that it won't have an error the next time you read it. PAR2, on the other hand, does provide for repair.

ZFS can at least detect, and optionally repair (if you use the redundancy options) these isolated bad bits, without the necessity for any special file metadata like PAR2. Of course, there's nothing to say you can't use both ZFS and PAR2.

http://www.wdc.com/en/products/catalog/

You must have checked last several months ago.

A TV computer made by anyone who is also in content business or who operates a public multimedia server, is 100% guaranteed to utterly suck and be nearly useless, since that computer will almost certainly be designed fror the purpose of fucking the user and channelling the users into doing business with some prticular service.

That'd rule out TV computers made by Microsoft, Nintendo, and Sony, all of which produce first-party games.

An example of a company that makes some TV computers which are basically founded on the right attitude, and therefore have unlimited positive capacity (whether you actually like the products or their build quality is a separate issue) is Western Digital.

Do WD TV and other TV computers that you recommend play video games, or do they play only noninteractive media? I can't seem to find a list of games that work on WD TV. The mention of games on the features page doesn't link to a list of all available games. Of all the services on WD TV's list of services, only PlayJam makes any mention of games. Is PlayJam really the only recommended provider for TV gaming?

A TV computer made by anyone who is also in content business or who operates a public multimedia server, is 100% guaranteed to utterly suck and be nearly useless, since that computer will almost certainly be designed fror the purpose of fucking the user and channelling the users into doing business with some prticular service.

That'd rule out TV computers made by Microsoft, Nintendo, and Sony, all of which produce first-party games.

An example of a company that makes some TV computers which are basically founded on the right attitude, and therefore have unlimited positive capacity (whether you actually like the products or their build quality is a separate issue) is Western Digital.

Do WD TV and other TV computers that you recommend play video games, or do they play only noninteractive media? I can't seem to find a list of games that work on WD TV. The mention of games on the features page doesn't link to a list of all available games. Of all the services on WD TV's list of services, only PlayJam makes any mention of games. Is PlayJam really the only recommended provider for TV gaming?

I don't know why you would use budget drives when there are drives designed for multi-stream recording and playback.

http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.aspx?id=150
Optimized for smooth, .
(Western Digital also makes a cheaper version that does 5 streams)

Their specs claim between 5400 and 7200 rpm, but my understanding is that it's much more 5400 than 7200,
which is how they get less power usage and lower noise levels than 7200 rpm drives.

"It's people. WD Green is made out of people."

If anyone from Western Digital or MGM/UA is listening, it's PARODY. Thank you.

Nah, I'd say invest in a WDTV Live (which I have) or Roku box (heard they're good too), and save yourself the monthly cable fees. Those boxes are usually ~$120... add the $8/mo for Netflix or Hulu Plus, and you won't need cable subscription... AND you don't get ads, you control what you want to see when you want to see it, etc. As an added bonus, these boxes play most media files from external hard drives connected via USB, and have HDMI connection out to TV. Netflix and Hulu have documentaries on nature, war, social issues, etc. that can keep you busy for weeks on end.

In fact, I predict a disaster that will have me looking for another entertainment hub.

...And the entertainment hub that you're looking for is called Plex. Based on how you describe your usage of iTunes, Plex may fit the bill. However, its suitability for you depends on two major questions:
1.) How willing you are to jailbreak your Apple TV - or replace it with one of these.
2.) How much DRM'd video content you've got tying you to the Apple ecosystem.

They've got iOS,Android, and desktop apps, and they work more beautifully than I can possibly describe.

Guessing your likely labour cost and the downtime costs, I'd definitely not want you to have to solder it again, even if it's 1 buck per capacitor. But he might have been checking just in case you were doing something silly/dubious.

As for WD Blacks how do they compare with the WD AV drives for your purposes? http://wdc.com/en/products/products.aspx?id=150

There are a lot of naysayers on here, but since you did not specify the capacities you are handling I'm going to assume that you are working with hundreds of terabytes, the scale at which using a tape library starts to really make economic sense. Any kind of "use tape to complement hard disk storage" scheme will use a robot-driven tape library. If you aren't in this class of solution, then the other posters are right, do not even consider going down this path, the expense ($10K USD entry level) is not worth it.

What you are looking for is called a Hierarchical Storage Management solution. They are all proprietary software (the hardware part of the solution is pretty much functionally interchangeable), there is no production-grade open source offering, which is unfortunate. The proprietary ones I know of don't allow hooks to programmatically customize inject/retrieval policies and operations, the primary reason to want an open source alternative (though Tivoli Storage Manager has an extensive API that someone could use to roll their own HSM with its own API complete with programmatic hooks).

If you find these financial requirements too onerous, then as a middle ground solution I recommend you get commercial-grade hard disks like Western Digital Black with 5-year warranties to hold everything you have, a single tape drive for traditional backups, some software that supports incremental backups, and climate controlled storage for tapes.

WD are already making SSDs.

Private cloud storage has always been around, but it used to be called a "fileserver", or maybe a "SAN", so just because they are calling storage consolidation a "private cloud" doesn't mean it's something new.

Indeed, "cloud" has become the must-have buzzword for everything and everyone. I was amused to see that Western Digital is selling a home network storage appliance as a Personal Cloud.

Western Digital has been using this tech for years...
http://wdc.com/en/products/products.aspx?id=100

--

No. most manufacturers define the terms as 1024 bytes per kilobyte, 1000 kilobytes per megabyte, 1000 megabytes per gigabyte, and 1000 gigabytes per terabyte. Which gets really confusing sometimes - they can't even stay consistent within their own system.

I haven't checked how Hitachi does it, but that's how Seagate and Western Digital do it. I would assume Hitachi marks them the same way.

No, actually, you're completely wrong.

Hitachi (click Specifications):

Capacity - One GB is equal to one billion bytes and one TB equals 1,000GB (one trillion bytes) when referring to hard drive capacity.

Seagate:

When referring to hard drive capacity, one gigabyte, or GB, equals one billion bytes and one terabyte, or TB, equals one trillion bytes.

Western Digital (click Specifications):

As used for storage capacity, one megabyte (MB) = one million bytes, one gigabyte (GB) = one billion bytes, and one terabyte (TB) = one trillion bytes.

Some floppies use hybrid measurements, but hard drives have been entirely powers of ten for ages.

http://www.wdc.com/wdproducts/library/SpecSheet/ENG/2879-701277.pdf

Formatted Capacity 500,107 MB = 488 GB so you need 138 MB/s to get data in an hour.

Ah, ok - well then I stand by my point ;)

http://iomega.com/iomegatv-media-center/
http://www.wdc.com/en/products/WDTV/
http://usa.asus.com/Multimedia/Digital_Media_Player/OPlay_HD2/
http://delive.netgear.com/
http://www.dlink.com/products/?pid=318 ...and I could probably add about 10 more links to similar products. I suppose a few of these aren't shipping yet, but many of these feature premium streaming services on their own or through a partnership with Boxee, so Roku will be joining them in the commodity streaming player wars in a matter of months...

I'm happy with a standalone streaming player. Or at least I will be when the WD-TV live and Netflix.ca get it together and start co-operating.

Looks like they are...for the WD HDTV Live Plus anyways... I don't think they are planning on supporting the regular WD HDTV Live for Netflix Canada, but I could be wrong.

Haven't rigged mine in to Netflix yet, will be doing so soon. Want to know if it works when I do? (it's a Plus)

Well... I did have to swerve around a box with a few velociraptors. Does that count?

Yes because Western Digital drives are extremely dangerous and prone to killing off anything that touches their platers.

Well... I did have to swerve around a box with a few velociraptors. Does that count?

It's a dang cheap way to get your stuff on your bigger screens, provided you're willing to jump through the necessary hoops.

Roku Box or WDTV, anyone? No hoops to jump through there...or, if you have an Xbox 360 or PS3, TVersity is a FANTASTIC solution.

No content.

Roku Box or WDTV, anyone? No hoops to jump through there...or, if you have an Xbox 360 or PS3, TVersity is a FANTASTIC solution.

By "hoops", I'm assuming the OP means "transferring your physical media to networked storage".

And you'll have to do that no matter what solution you use. The only difference is in what "hoops" you have to jump through. Some only need the DVD to be ripped. Others want it in divx or h.264 format.

I started out ripping all my movies to h.264, so I have very few "hoops" to jump through, and my files play on almost all devices out there, including ATV.

It's a dang cheap way to get your stuff on your bigger screens, provided you're willing to jump through the necessary hoops.

Roku Box or WDTV, anyone? No hoops to jump through there...or, if you have an Xbox 360 or PS3, TVersity is a FANTASTIC solution.

The first link in your snarky little post is for a Television station. Really, is it so hard to link to the actual site?

WD TV Live Plus

You can get them for about $120 at newegg the last time I checked.

Yes, Western Digital media players.

Just get this: http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.asp?driveid=735

Problem solved.

I tried out the WD TV Live and was impressed by it. I was streaming recorded content from MythTV using UPnP/DLNA and tried a number of other media files over USB and it was able to play them quite nicely. I played a bit of content recorded from a HD-PVR (in 720p) and it played back nicely.

Based on size, features, and price it is a worthy consideration. One of my co-workers owns 2 WD TV Live and at least 1 of the original WD TV. He has been very happy with them. Currently at least one of his WD TV Live is running the b-rad firmware.

I built a HTPC, along with some friends, several years ago to run MythTV. I have been very pleased with the result. It took a while to decide on the hardware. I have a system that sits with the TV. It is reasonably quiet., basically I only hear it a little when all sound is off and even then mostly when I walk closer. I looked for cases with Silicon mounts for HDs and 120mm fans (1/2 speed switch). I've got a passively cooled video card. We picked the Antec Fusion and I have been really pleased with it. There is also the NSK2480 without VFD and the MicroFusion now. One friend even built a second machine using basically the NSK2480 since he like the Fusion case design so much.

That said, I have been looking for a nice compact low cost front end that I can use if I get a second TV. Ideally I would like to run mythfrontend since it provides complete support with mythbackend (LiveTV, Commercial flags, etc). The devices I have primarily considered over the years are the HD TV Live, popcorn hour, Apple TV/Mac Mini (only if I can install Linux and run Mythfrontend), or a itx computer.

Based on how content is being accessed is the primary consideration along with required features. Aside from the LiveTV and commercial flag limitations with MythTV, I am currently most interested in the WD TV Live based on my criteria - small, networked, HD, significant codec support (MPEG2, DivX, Xvid, h.264, ogg, ac-3, etc), cheap. I had been looking for a device for several years and I became excited when the the WD TV Live came out. It is the closest device to what I'm looking for. I figure I can even just make LiveTV on MythTV accessible over UPnP with a little effort.

Second this. Got one at Costco on an impulse and have been very impressed what the little $100 box does. Stick a USB hard drive on it and it even shares that out via SMB. Cool box.

http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.asp?driveid=735

Although I haven't done it, it seems to be hackable.

http://b-rad.cc/wdlxtv/

1 of these http://www.norcotek.com/item_detail.php?categoryid=1&modelno=rpc-4220
1 of these http://www.lsi.com/channel/products/raid_controllers/sata_sas/3ware_9750-8i/index.html
1 quad core Xeon + mobo + 8gigs of ram of your choice
1 of these http://www.chenbro.com/corporatesite/products_detail.php?sku=75
1 of operating system of your choice
20 of these http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.asp?driveid=733
and then put on the media software of your choice (mine is ps3 media server)
This is all because my current (6tb) array got filled with media, home movies, tv shows and what have you. So, hopefully ~30tb (raid6 + 2 hotspares) will do the trick for a while.....
Probably WAY overkill for your use, but +hypervisor of your choice, its nice and easy to run as a media server and an ARMAII server or TF2 server....
lastly, check out i-star or istar usa, they have rackmount cases for prettymuch everything. Awesomeness! (50drive case....maybe for my next one, mwahaha)

http://www.wdc.com/wdproducts/library/SpecSheet/ENG/2879-701284.pdf

1. Sustained transfer rate - WD Raptor has higher write speed (126MB/s vs 70 MB/s), SSD wins with 250 MB/s read speed.

2. Size - 32 GB vs 300 GB. Drives are not from same league.

3. Price
    INTEL X25-V SATA2 SSD 40GB 2.5" MLC 34NM (115 EUR, 2.9 EUR/GB)
    WD VELOCIRAPTOR 300GB SATA2 10KRPM 16MB (185 EUR, 0.62 EUR/GB)

4. SMART
    both drives support it, but I don't know how much time SSD can give between warning and dieing.

Yeah...I am sure that you have looked at the reliability numbers...like ever...

Intel x-25m reliability: http://download.intel.com/design/flash/nand/mainstream/mainstream-sata-ssd-datasheet.pdf

BER (read error rate) of 1 sector per 10^15 bits read
MTBF 1,200,000 hours
Minimum 5 years useful life

WD Raptor Reliability: http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.asp?driveid=495

MTBF 1,400,000 hours
Other figures not given

and the WD Raptor is considered an Enterprise hard drive, so that should say something about the reliability expected. I don't see these drives failing any time soon, and I have a Intel x-25m 32GB I bought a little over a year ago running quite strong with no errors in my desktop that rarely is shutdown.

The only reliability problems I have seen is in MLC based drives we use here at work for database servers, they go offline and have to be reseated in order to bring them back, but we haven't had any of these fail yet even under the heavy strain of a database server.

"There is no "TURBO" feature on any of their commercial products, but nice FUD you've got there."

Dear AC or WD something

Here is the directory from that drive:
$ls
WD_Windows_Tools autorun.inf

(remaining file, since it is virus cleaned)
$WD_Windows_Tools: ls
restart.exe

Please tell me a logical reason why an hard disk, portable one runs "autorun" and why it even needs a restart? Let me tell why. Those incompetent friends of yours also installs a windows driver, in old fashioned way. My friend is very glad that she works at DTP sector where "everything happens", someone could even claim that she was installing trojans to their private network thanks to WD.

There is no "Turbo" software? WD support site says otherwise:
http://support.wdc.com/product/download.asp?groupid=116&sid=108&lang=en
File Name: WD+TURBO_Installer_v_1_1_0.zip

It is full of kernel extensions. At least it is OS X where such junk is easily hunted thanks to directory structure. On Windows with 3000 file system32 and 100MB registry? Good luck.

BTW, the drive which that image resides is a WD hard disk too and I am perfectly happy about it, my first drive that actually hit SATA1 bandwidth speed limit.

Once more with feeling:
http://support.wdc.com/product/download.asp?groupid=901&lang=en

I bought a WD TV mini and burned my movie collection onto a 500GB USB drive. I didn't rip out the old DVD player I just connected the WD TV to the existing AV ports. We still use the DVD player for movies we haven't converted yet, but have access to the rest of our movie catalog while in the car. The best part is that the DVD's aren't constantly getting scratched up by the kids. Oh and it frees up a lot of space in the glove box where we had a case of DVD's now there is just a USB drive and the very very small WD TV box.

""Compare how fast 3.5" capacity went from 1G->500G to how relatively slowly its inched from 500G->2000G."

First 1GB hard drive came out around 1994 or 1995. It took 10 years until the first 500GB HD came out in 2005. Then the first 2TB drive came out in 2009, 4 years later. So basically, what the hell are you talking about?"

First, I need links.
First 100gb, 2001
First 500gb, 2005
First 2tb, 2009

I'd love to find older stories but any page before 2000 doesn't rank well on Google.

Anyway, Quantum you're right, we went from 500gb to 2tb in 4 years, while the trip from 1gb to 500gb took a little over ten years.

I have been running Win7 with an SSD for the last 8 months and I am never going back. You should actually read some recent literature on SSDs to answer this question. SSDs now advertise lifetimes comparable to or longer than magnetic disks, thanks to using very advanced firmware to do error correction and wear leveling. If there is an error in an SSD write, the drive will work around it and write to another sector (most drives have unreported capacity they use for this and wear leveling).

The OCZ Vertex II, currently an industry favorite, advertises 1.5-million-hour mean time before failure. That means that the drives are estimated to last 171 years of normal use before failing outright. A Western Digital Caviar Black, on the other hand, is rated for 300,000 load/unload cycles, meaning you can spin it up and down 300,000 times. If you spin up and down 5 times a day, it will last 164 years, not counting possible degradation of the magnetic disk coating or mechanical failure due to shock or temperature extremes.

Basically, SSDs are a pretty mature technology with reliability that meets or exceeds standard HDDs. In many applications, the vibration and temperature resistance of SSDs give them a significant advantage of HDDs. Just remember that you have to treat them differently from "dumb" HDDs--the SSD firmware automatically does all the defrag/wear leveling/error correction itself so trying to do that manually will kill the drive prematurely. File system alignment and RAID controller settings can be very important as well, so due diligence is required to use them properly.

http://www.wdc.com/en/products/advancedformat/

WD Align software aligns partitions on the Advanced Format drive to ensure it provides full performance for certain configurations.

Yes, certain configurations: XP. According to WD, Linux is not affected by this (but that's been proven to be false).

WD Align software aligns partitions on the Advanced Format drive to ensure it provides full performance for certain configurations.