Posted on 03/13/2010 10:18:10 PM PST by JoeProBono
By the end of January 2011, almost all new hard drives sold will have switched to a new format that will increase their size and efficiency, but will leave those clinging to Windows XP frustrated.
Traditionally, data on hard disks has been broken up into 512 byte chunks. Each broken-up sector requires additional space on a physical disk to mark the beginning and the end of each piece. Extra space is also needed for error correction, and there needs to be a bit of room to separate it from the next chunk. This wasn't much of a problem when the format debuted in the '80s when hard drives were measured in megabytes. Now that we have entered the terabyte era, the extra room required for each sector leads to wasted space on the surface of a disk.
A new format, which all disk manufacturers have agreed to migrate to by the end of January of next year, increases these sectors to 4 kilobytes, or eight times the size. This reduces waste and increases disk size, but an operating system must be able to recognize the new format. Vista and Windows 7 users are in the clear, as are Mac users with OS X 10.4 or higher and Linux users with a kernel released after September of 2009... XP users, on the other hand, may encounter some problems.
Windows XP must use an emulation layer that makes the 4KB sectors appear to be several 512 byte ones. This won't have much of an impact when reading from the disk, but could lead to slowdowns of as much as 10-percent when writing data. That could be a particularly big problem for those performing media intensive tasks like video editing.
We know this is some pretty techy stuff, but what it boils down to is, if you plan to build a new Windows XP computer in the future, you might want buy your hard drive now. Otherwise, it might be time to consider that upgrade to Windows 7.
In my experience, corporate computers are leased for this reason -- to keep maintenance costs under control.
Netbooks typically have a small 16GB solid state 'hard drive'. The article is talking about physical disk formats over 2TB.
The very early ones did. Not any more.
Most have physical disk hard drives these days.
You can check yourself on Amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/bestsellers/electronics/1232596011/ref=pd_ts_pc_nav
This B.S. of “forced obsolescence” of electronic/technology products is getting VERY VERY OLD, and hopefully these greedy companies will soon have a MUTINY on their greedy hands from recalcitrant consumers who have had enough! Even if we were not in the midst of a severe economic crisis, many of us have wasted ENOUGH of our hard-earned dollars on these infernal machines and programs that promise everything and deliver very little. It’s bad enough that they’ve forced everyone to “upgrade” to digital TVs and they’re now scheming to force everyone onto broadband, but to deliberately make their software and hardware obsolete in order to get (FORCE) us to buy more of their cr*p is unconscionable. Believe it or not, some of us still are using “OBSOLETE” equipment & software that suits us fine—like Windows 95 or 98 or 2000; and WordPerfect (!! remember that??) and Adobe Acrobat 4.0, on and on and on. Manufacturers/developers: Please stop trying to force people to get onboard with your latest/greatest/flashiest/costliest cr*p. Many of us PREFER the older, simpler, trustier, safer versions of equipment and software. (And that goes for cars, washing machines, refrigerators and sewing machines, too!)
You may be right about that.
From Microsoft (the Great Satan):
“To reduce backward compatibility issues, some manufacturers will produce hard disk drives that use a large physical sector size internally, but expose only a logical sector size of 512 bytes to the system. These hard disk drives are referred to as emulation devices because of the method that the drives use to write data. This method is frequently called “read-modify-write.” For writes that are smaller than a physical sector, the drive must read the physical sector, modify the small, changed part of the sector, and then write the whole physical sector. The main drawback of this kind of hard disk drive is decreased performance. The extra read operation that must occur for writes that are smaller than the physical sector may decrease performance. “
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/923332
From Western Digital:
The good news is, Western Digital has already solved the problem. Those of you who want to use an AF (4kb sector) drive in Windows XP can either install a hardware jumper (if you plan to use a single, simple partition) or run a software tool called WDAlign.
My apprehension of going with a Win7 system is that some of my older (DOS and pre-WinXP) programs, which I MUST have, could no longer work.
I have an IE6 based tabbed browser that I use exclusively for FR because it has some editing add-ons that are no longer available and not compatible with later IE’s (IE7 is crap — I tried it and immediately uninstalled it; I haven’t tried IE8). I refuse to give UP my FR browser.
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Win7 Home does NOT allow the XP window. And why run Win7 Premium if I am going to have to run an XP window within?
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These new systems are enticing — the speed, the memory (some up to 12gb), the disk size, and the prices are not too high either.
Cool website, I like what you’re doing. I cut my teeth on the 8080 and MC68000 but I haven’t worked with anything but PIC micros for a decade now.
I’m going to keep an eye on your site for updates.
Define ‘restored’ - are you talking about restoring from a backup or using a recovery (reinstallation) disk provided by your PC’s manufacturer?
Restoring from a backup may simply reestablish problems with registry, system files, etc. that were part and parcel of your setup at the time you created the backup.
The only way to to get ‘factory fresh’ is to reinstall Windows (or use the recovery disks) and applications then restore only your data from the backup.
BS
I'm running openSuSE 11.2 on the laptop I'm posting this from. And some OS' have been able to handle larger sector sizes for quite a number of years.
Typically, the server class OS'; larger sector sizes were more efficient for large data sets (DB files). the 512B size was better for a larger number of smaller data sets (larger numbers of small files). It's been a trade off depending on the type of data you stored. But, that was back when HD's were measured in MB and early GB.
Good for you, and the other nineteen Linux home computers!
Seriously, together with all the other users of Linux-based OS, you make up just less than 1% of market share (not counting Mac OS users).
I’m confused.
Didn’t they switch to 512 bytes from 2004 (IIRC).
The larger sector was wasting space because a file or bit of info only a few bytes in size took up an entire sector and wasted the rest of the sector?
Considering that Linux is not “sold”, how do you get accurate numbers on the number of users? And the laptop I’m running Linux on, came with Vista (a steaming pile if I ever saw one), that I’ve wiped. So technically, that counts as a Windows seat, even though it occupies no space on my HD.
In light of your problem, that phrase with the word 'restore' in it requires some specifics.
Did you backup just user data and then wipe the drive clean and restore a fresh copy of the OS and then restore your user data?
Did you simly do a repair restore of the OS (presuming Winders here) with the install disk?
What exact steps did you take to 'restore' your computer? That needs to be known up front before any diagnosis can be done.
This article is bullsh*t, as are most anti-Microsoft articles. Windows XP already has, and has had for years, the ability to use differing cluster sizes, including 4k. It is the DOS emulation, or FAT32, format that has the problem. Windows XP also can use the NTFS format, which allows differing cluster sizes.
That IS a patch.
“Windows XP must use an emulation layer that makes the 4KB sectors appear to be several 512 byte ones.
That IS a patch.”
Yes I understand that!
My point is that the same patch that Vista is getting needs to be exported to XP, not this substandard hack that you are touting!
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