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Long Block Data Standard Finalized
An anonymous reader writes "IDEMA has finally released the LBD (Long Block Data) standard. This standard, in work since 2000, increases the length of the data blocks of each sector from 512 bytes to 4,096 bytes. This is an update that has been requested for some time by the hard-drive industry and the development of new drives will start immediately. The new standard offers many advantages — improved reliability and higher transfer rates are the two most obvious. While some manufacturers say the reliability may increase as much as tenfold, the degree of performance improvement to be expected is a bit more elusive. Overall improvements include shorter time to format and more efficient data transfers due to smaller overhead per block during read and write operations."
Now when I want to update just 256 bytes, instead of reading 512 bytes, changing 256 of them, and writing 512 back, I now have to do this with 4096 bytes. So I end up transferring 3584 more bytes than I otherwise needed to.
They really could do this transparently. Let the driver write anything in any range. Then have the drive take care of reading the data for any sector partially written, update it, and write it back. With a method like that, we really won't have to know the physical sector size (which could even be allowed to vary depending on the position on the drive). It should also be made smart enough that if the driver writes a long sequence of smaller traditional 512 byte sectors, it will know which real physical sectors are totally written and won't make any effort to pre-read them.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
In case you haven't noticed, Novell = EVIL... I WAS a $$$ Suse customer for several years but their recent M$ antics have pissed me off and I'm converting my systems from Suse to Gentoo.