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Exploring Advanced Format Hard Drive Technology
MojoKid writes "Hard drive capacities are sometimes broken down by the number of platters and the size of each. The first 1TB drives, for example, used five 200GB platters; current-generation 1TB drives use two 500GB platters. These values, however, only refer to the accessible storage capacity, not the total size of the platter itself. Invisible to the end-user, additional capacity is used to store positional information and for ECC. The latest Advanced Format hard drive technology changes a hard drive's sector size from 512 bytes to 4096 bytes. This allows the ECC data to be stored more efficiently. Advanced Format drives emulate a 512 byte sector size, to keep backwards compatibility intact, by mapping eight logical 512 byte sectors to a single physical sector. Unfortunately, this creates a problem for Windows XP users. The good news is, Western Digital has already solved the problem and HotHardware offers some insight into the technology and how it performs."
When this issue came up a few weeks ago there was a problem with XP and with Linux. I see they tackled the XP issue pretty quick but what about Linux?
This place had something about it.
The filesystem's minimum allocation unit size doesn't necessarily need to have a strong relationship with the physical sector size. Some filesystems don't have the behavior of rounding up the consumed space for small files because they will store multiple small files inside a single allocation unit. (IIRC, Reiser is such an FS.)
Also, we are actually talking about 4 kilobyte sectors. TFS refers to it as 4096k, which would be a 4 megabyte sector. (Which is wildly wrong.) So, worst case for your example of a thousand 1k files is actually 4 megabytes, not 4 gigabytes as you suggest. And, really, if my 2 terabyte drive gets an extra 11% from the more efficient ECC with the 4k sectors, that gives me a free 220000 megabytes, which pretty adequately compensates for the 3 MB I theoretically lose in a worst case filesystem from your example thousand files.
If you read the article carefully, the new size is only 4K, not 4096K. The 4K size actually matches very well with most common files ystems.
Looks like they're not the only ones who miscalculated their block boundary.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
I can't grasp why all (these specific and most) benchmarks are so much obsessed with speed. Regarding HDs, I'd like to see results relevant to:
1. Number of Read/Write operations per task: Does the new format result in fewer head movements, therefore less wear on the hardware, thus increasing HD's life expectancy and MTBF?
2. Energy efficiency: Does the new format have lower power consumption, leading to lower operating temperature and better laptop/netbook battery autonomy?
3. Are there differences in sustained read/write performance? E.g. is the new format more suitable for video editing than the old one?
For me, the first issue is the more important than all, given that owning huge 2T disks is in fact like playing Russian roulette: without proper backup strategies, you risk all your data at once.
1 No one except LOSERS uses Windows XP.
Beck: I'm a loser, baby, 'cuz I'm usin' XP ...
2. What is Slashdot's commission on these shameful book plugs?
One free page from the book, randomly selected, until they've referred enough people to the publisher's site to receive the entire book. Unfortunately, it arrives as lose pages in no particular order. Cmdr Taco is never pleased with this.
Have a weekend, loozars.
Yours In Tashkent, K. Trout
Thanks, you too.
Anandtech has a much better write up on this technology, complete with correct conversions from bits to bytes, knowledge of the difference between 4096 bytes and 4096 kilobytes, and no in-text ads.
No. Just no.
Never use the term 'KiB' for kiloBYTES ever again. Just don't do it. I don't CARE if it's "the new standard". Screw that, it's KB KiloBytes.
This "new" standard mandated by the IEC can eat me.
1024 bytes IS, and forever will be, 1 KiloByte (KB)
1000 bits IS, and forever will be, 1 KiloBit (Kb)
1999 and the IEC can DROP DEAD. I will never. EVER. Use the new """""""""""""standard"""""""""""".
That said, excellent job highlighting the dreadful editing, inaccuracies like that are so confusing to try and keep straight between what is written and what was MEANT. Thumps up for you!
This signature is lame.
That article doesn't sound like fun at all. How are we supposed to mock it if they haven't made multiple errors, typos and other such blunders? We're smug, semi-knowledgeable 'first posters' with nothing better to do than critique articles that we were too lazy to read or too incompetent to write. I'm going to go wait on the homepage to refresh so I can jump into the next thread without a second thought.
It was never KB and never will be. kB perhaps but not KB.
Unfortunately, it arrives as lose pages in no particular order. Cmdr Taco is never pleased with this.
Have a weekend, loozars.
For all intensive purposes, you're post should of exploded the heads of any grammar nazis as they read they're screen. Which begs the question of what more damage could possibly be done to effect there sensibilities? Honestly, I could care less.
Now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure everything I just said is completely wrong.
"it's 4 KiB or just 4096 bytes."
No. Just no.
Never use the term 'KiB' for kiloBYTES ever again.
"kiB" is for kibibytes, not kilobytes...
The introduction of those new units always kind of grated me, as it went against all the 20-odd years of experience I'd had with computers up to that point. But, I have to say, "kilobytes" and "megabytes" and "gigabytes" had always been ambiguously defined. Usually RAM would use the power-of-two definitions and disks would use the power-of-ten definitions... As someone who appreciates precise language, I think this effort to disambiguate the terminology is a good thing, even if it goes against what I learned about computers as a kid. I don't think making the opposite change (i.e. keeping "kilobyte" = 1024 bytes and making a new term for 1000 bytes) would have made any sense at all - the "kilo" in "kilobyte" goes against the normal definition of "kilo". I think it was always kind of sleazy that hard drive manufacturers could tell you they were giving you a megabyte of storage and it would be less than what the computer considers a "megabyte" - but the prefix has a definition that predates its use in computing, and from that perspective I think that usage, while problematic and misleading, was legitimate.
Bow-ties are cool.
It's "for all intents and purposes" not "for all intensive purposes." When you say it you can get away with it wrong, but when you write it you just look dumb.
Indeed. Its a common mistake, but you're vigilance is dually noted. I'm just glad I didn't loose all credibility by making alot more mistakes.
Now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure everything I just said is completely wrong.