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HDD Manufacturers Moving To 4096-Byte Sectors

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the zomg-the-world-will-collapse dept.

Luminous Coward writes "As previously discussed on Slashdot, according to AnandTech and The Tech Report, hard disk drive manufacturers are now ready to bump the size of the disk sector from 512 to 4096 bytes, in order to minimize storage lost to ECC and sync. This may not be a smooth transition, because some OSes do not align partitions on 4K boundaries."

11 of 442 comments (clear)

  1. Factors of 10 by suso · · Score: 5, Funny

    Why not just move it to 1000 byte sectors, then we could minimize the space lost to advertising.

    (Note to accuracy nazis, this is meant to be funny)

    1. Re:Factors of 10 by rolfwind · · Score: 4, Funny

      If they want to use base10 the first thing they should do is respecify a byte to be 10bits.

      How about leaving the word byte alone and using another, distinct group of letter to do the job? Respecifying only confuses the issue, even those who know, because you're still be working with two different definitions in the same field for a long time.

    2. Re:Factors of 10 by drainbramage · · Score: 4, Funny

      Mine goes to 11.

      --
      No brain, no pain.
    3. Re:Factors of 10 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

      What, like bite?

  2. Re:Care to provide examples? by andrewd18 · · Score: 5, Funny

    I realize this is Slashdot, but both of the articles linked talk about the affected operating system. Hint: It shares an ending with a colloquial name for urine.

  3. Re:Care to provide examples? by tepples · · Score: 5, Funny

    I realize this is Slashdot, but both of the articles linked talk about the affected operating system. Hint: It shares an ending with a colloquial name for urine.

    Wii? PSP?

  4. Re:intelligent interfaces by Thanshin · · Score: 5, Funny

    Do you really believe your hard drive has 256 heads?

    It had only six, at first, but we didn't know the thing about burning the stumps.

  5. Tail packing by tepples · · Score: 4, Funny

    Unless HDD makers were going to create firmware, and programmers made partition formats, which address each bit individually (which itself would require an enormous amount of space... much larger than the HDD in fact), you will always be unable to live without sectors. The subdivision idea is again relevant. Imagine if every part of the 20 acre plot had to be "addressable" down to the square inch.

    It's called block suballocation: store a small file in its entirety in another file's slack space. And yes, it's a "killer" feature.

    1. Re:Tail packing by Hatta · · Score: 2, Funny

      So, I guess Hans Reiser has a lot of experience with tail packing then.

      --
      Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
  6. Re:Care to provide examples? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Solar... isssss

    D:

  7. Re:Care to provide examples? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    OS X-crement?