[JoeProBono]

[CedarDave]

Tech Ping!

[Moonman62]

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.

Not a big deal at all.

[A CA Guy]

This will cause some to get freeware. I doubt those with the new notebooks or other XP users would waste their money buying a copy of Vista or 7 IMO.

[J Edgar]

Same Old Same Old from MS and hardware interests as they conspire to force obsolescence for profit! A ROM solution on the hardware side could eliminate this problem for XP users by offering, for a small charge, a ROM upgrade that address sectors in the older 512 byte scheme. Go ahead and flame, but MS doesn't compete, MS conspires for profit. IMHO

[ComputerGuy]

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.

Let's see, older versions of Mac OS, Linux and Windows are affected. Only Windows rates a mention in the headline.

[ChrisInAR]

Would anyone be kind enough to give me a lil advice?

I restored my cmptr recently, ‘cuz it was performing waaaaaay to slowly. I thought that by doing so, everything would be RESTORED as if the cmptr was brand new. Boy, was I wrong.

I still have prob’s w/ slow downloading time, my cmptr is VERY slow when starting up, &, even after “restoring” things, it still takes longer to surf the net than it did when it was brand new (I have a broadband connection, NOT a dial-up). What am I to do, & is it even possible for me to get things running as fast as it did when I bought it about 5 yrs ago???

Thank you very much.

[RandallFlagg]

I’m building a sweet gaming rig.
COOLER MASTER HAF 932 case
GIGABYTE GA-X58A-UD5 LGA 1366 Intel X58 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard
2X DIAMOND 5970PE52G Radeon HD 5970 (Hemlock) 2GB 512 (256 x 2)-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.1 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFireX Support
ENERMAX REVOLUTION85+ ERV1050EWT 1050W ATX12V / EPS12V SLI Ready CrossFire
Intel Core i7-920 Bloomfield 2.66GHz LGA 1366 130W Quad-Core Processor

With about 5TB worth of hard drives.

Getting a couple of components per paycheck.

I’m going to play Crysis at max settings if it kills me!!!

[VeniVidiVici]

Well, let’s see. There are an abundance of cheap 2TB and below drives out there that will probably be around on EBay for quite a few years.

I’ll go out on a limb here but I think if XP users want to continue running XP after the new drives are introduced, I don’t think this will be a problem.

[altoinprogress]

ping

[BP2]

I can't see this being much of a problem at all, as NTSF has been around
for XP users to use for nearly 10 years now.

Just keep formatting your hard drive in NTSF format (4K clusters), break
up the partitions so they are less than 2TB, or simply stay under 2TB when
you buy a new physical drive.

Your system may have lower limitations anyway. I have backup 5-year-old
laptop that can't see anything above 136 GB because of the BIOS and chipset.

Criteria	NTFS5	NTFS	exFAT/FAT64	FAT32	FAT16	FAT12
Operating System	Windows 2000 Windows XP Windows 2003 Server Windows Vista Windows 7	Windows NT Windows 2000 Windows XP Windows 2003 Server Windows Vista Windows 7	Windows CE 6.0 Windows Vista SP1 Windows 7 WinXP+KB955704	DOS v7 and higher Windows 98 Windows ME Windows 2000 Windows XP Windows 2003 Server Windows Vista Windows 7	DOS All versions of Microsoft Windows	DOS All versions of Microsoft Windows
Limitations
Max Volume Size	2TB	2TB	64ZB	32GB for all OS. 2TB for some OS	2GB for all OS. 4GB for some OS	16MB
Max Files on Volume	Nearly Unlimited	Nearly Unlimited	Nearly Unlimited	4194304	65536
Max File Size	Limit Only by Volume Size	Limit Only by Volume Size	16ZB	4GB minus 2 Bytes	2GB (Limit Only by Volume Size)	16MB (Limit Only by Volume Size)
Max Clusters Number	Nearly Unlimited	Nearly Unlimited	4294967295	4177918	65520	4080
Max File Name Length	Up to 255	Up to 255	Up to 255	Up to 255	Standard - 8.3 Extended - up to 255	Up to 254

[RayChuang88]

Given how good Windows 7 is anyway, not an issue for me! One of my machines at home runs Windows 7 and I like it for its FAST bootup and shutdown times.

[Memoria]

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!)

[Fresh Wind]

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.

http://hothardware.com/Articles/WDs-1TB-Caviar-Green-w-Advanced-Format-Windows-XP-Users-Pay-Attention/

[TomGuy]

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.

==

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?

==

These new systems are enticing — the speed, the memory (some up to 12gb), the disk size, and the prices are not too high either.

[Vinnie]

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?

[McGruff]

Evil Microsoft will make all obsolete computers do this eventually.

[CodeToad]

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.