Hard drive evolution could hit XP

[.Markus]

Hard drives are about to undergo one of the biggest format shifts in 30 years.

By early 2011 all hard drives will use an "advanced format" that changes how they go about saving the data people store on them.

The move to the advanced format will make it easier for hard drive makers to produce bigger drives that use less power and are more reliable.

However, it might mean problems for Windows XP users who swap an old drive for one using the changed format.

Error codes

Since the days of the venerable DOS operating system, the space on a hard drive has been formatted into blocks 512 bytes in size.

The 512 byte sector became standardised thanks to IBM which used it on floppy disks.

While 512 bytes was useful when hard drives were only a few megabytes in size, it makes less sense when drives can hold a terabyte (1000 gigabytes), or more of data.

The 512 byte format dates from the days of the floppy"The technology has changed but that fundamental building block of formatting has not," said David Burks, a product marketing manager for storage firm Seagate.

This fine resolution on hard drives is causing a problem, he said, because of the wasted space associated with each tiny block.

Each 512 byte sector has a marker showing where it begins and an area dedicated to storing error correction codes. In addition a tiny gap has to be left between each sector. In large drives this wasted space where data cannot be stored can take up a significant proportion of the drive.

Moving to an advanced format of 4K sectors means about eight times less wasted space but will allow drives to devote twice as much space per block to error correction.

"You can get yourself into a corner where you cannot squeeze much more onto the disk," said Steve Perkins, a technical consultant for Western Digital.

This shift also allows manufacturers to make more efficient use of the real estate on a hard drive.

"We can put more data on the disk," he said. "It's about 7-11% more efficient as a format."

Slow down

Through the International Disk Drive Equipment and Materials Association (Idema) all hard drive makers have committed to adopting the 4K advanced format by the end of January 2011.

Hard drive makers have begun an education and awareness campaign to let people know about the advanced format and to warn about the problems it could inflict on users of older operating systems such as Windows XP.

This is because Windows XP was released before the 4K format was decided upon.

"The 512 byte sector assumption is ensconced into a lot of the aspects of computer architecture," said Mr Burks from Seagate.

By contrast, Windows 7, Vista, OS X Tiger, Leopard, Snow Leopard and versions of the Linux kernel released after September 2009 are all 4K aware.

To help Windows XP cope, advanced format drives will be able to pretend they still use sectors 512 bytes in size.

When reading data from a drive this emulation will go unnoticed. However, said Mr Burks, in some situations writing data could hit performance.

In some cases the drive will take two steps to write data rather than one and introduce a delay of about 5 milliseconds.

"All other things being equal you will have a noticeable hard drive reduction in performance," said Mr Burks, adding that, in some circumstances, it could make a drive 10% slower.

In a bid to limit the misalignment, hard drive makers are producing software that ensures 512 sectors line up with 4K ones.

Those most likely to see the performance problems are those building their own computers or swapping out an old drive for one that uses the new format.

Source: BBC Technology

This was news to me, and quite interesting to read..

[Growled Member]

Interesting. Anyway, this is just another way that manufactures force people to upgrade to the latest OS. It usually works too.

[The_Decryptor Veteran]

Upgrading to the latest OS would mean Vista to Win7, this mainly effects people running an outdated copy of Windows.

And I think it has more to do with storage and speed, rather than forcing people to upgrade to Vista or higher.

[neufuse Veteran]

Move to Windows 7 or OSX already :laugh: no really on a serious note though, Advanced format is a good thing

[REM2000]

makes sense, you can only hold back technology for so long, computing is a forward looking technology and has made plenty of software packages, OS's and hardware obsolete through the passage of time.

[Sulphy]

,,, sounds good to me! i want real estate the size of a texas farm! :laugh:

[spy beef]

You can't teach an old dog new tricks.

[Tha Bloo Monkee]

...and they can't release drivers of some kind to solve this? XP also doesn't natively read SATA in the installer but with driver support it does. XP is still one of the most-used OSes. Even if manufacturers don't release proper drivers I see 3rd party solutions coming to solve this.

Anyways, good news for the hard drive advancement itself.

[carmatic]

hmm maybe im confusing this with a file system, but isnt NTFS already 4096 bytes per sector by default?

[wellofsouls]

It's always a good thing for people to move from XP to Win7.

XP was a great OS, but time has moved on, and XP should have its peaceful death already.

[+Warwagon MVC]

I think they should put this much energy towards SSD drives and get the cost down and the size up. Leave hard drive tech the way it is so we can use them as secondary storage drives, but Get this SSD tech main stream.

[Colin-uk Veteran]

Dont see why MS cant/wont release a patch for that tbh :p

[Tha Bloo Monkee]

I wish people would quit saying that XP is more dead than it actually is. XP still has over 50% market share according to this. Just because Neowin is a tech-savvy forum where people are more keen on updating their computers doesn't mean the rest of the world is...

Not only that, but XP has more market share than Win7 and Vista combined. Put that in your pipe and smoke it. ;)

[Mr. Gibs]

...and they can't release drivers of some kind to solve this? XP also doesn't natively read SATA in the installer but with driver support it does. XP is still one of the most-used OSes. Even if manufacturers don't release proper drivers I see 3rd party solutions coming to solve this.

Anyways, good news for the hard drive advancement itself.

To quote from the article:

To help Windows XP cope, advanced format drives will be able to pretend they still use sectors 512 bytes in size.

When reading data from a drive this emulation will go unnoticed. However, said Mr Burks, in some situations writing data could hit performance.

In some cases the drive will take two steps to write data rather than one and introduce a delay of about 5 milliseconds.

"All other things being equal you will have a noticeable hard drive reduction in performance," said Mr Burks, adding that, in some circumstances, it could make a drive 10% slower.

[Tha Bloo Monkee]

^ yes, I read that. Thank you. However, what's still stopping manufacturers to make proper drivers that don't require emulation?

[Mr. Gibs]

^ yes, I read that. Thank you. However, what's still stopping manufacturers to make proper drivers that don't require emulation?

But why? Shouldn't there come a time when someone goes thats enough with backward compatibility for the sake of technological advancements? Or should we keep making stuff with the past in mind?

It's the same story with 64bit and stuff. People just don't want change =/

[t_r_nelson]

Tomshardware had a really good article on this:

Toms - 4K Sectors

[+jamesyfx Subscriber²]

Hard drives are in dire need of an update, the technology is as dated sounding as Floppy Disk. :p

[Tha Bloo Monkee]

But why? Shouldn't there come a time when someone goes thats enough with backward compatibility for the sake of technological advancements? Or should we keep making stuff with the past in mind?

Let me quote myself:

I wish people would quit saying that XP is more dead than it actually is. XP still has over 50% market share according to this. Just because Neowin is a tech-savvy forum where people are more keen on updating their computers doesn't mean the rest of the world is...

Not only that, but XP has more market share than Win7 and Vista combined. Put that in your pipe and smoke it. ;)

They still make drivers for new devices with XP in mind I'm sure, why not hard drives?

[Mr. Gibs]

Let me quote myself:

They still make drivers for new devices with XP in mind I'm sure, why not hard drives?

So I'm going to say it again. Why? It costs money for those companies to make drivers, or run separate assembly lines to make older drives.

It's been almost 10 years since XP was released, and I don't care if you aren't tech literate or w/e. If you don't want to upgrade, you shouldn't expect to get technological advancements.

[Tha Bloo Monkee]

Ugh. Companies already DO make XP drivers for new stuff. Obviously the cost of making it compatible is better because 50% of people still use XP.

I basically just reiterated what I've already said.

Edit: I never said anything about making new "older" drives.

Besides, the article mentioned emulation but never did mention anything about never having driver support for these new drives so it could be wrong to assume that there never will be drivers. I'm almost certain that there will be a 3rd party solution to solve this later on, unless there's some serious hardware issues that make it incompatible that we don't know about.

[xtrabit racing]

hmm maybe im confusing this with a file system, but isnt NTFS already 4096 bytes per sector by default?

same here

[iamwhoiam]

But why? Shouldn't there come a time when someone goes thats enough with backward compatibility for the sake of technological advancements? Or should we keep making stuff with the past in mind?

It's the same story with 64bit and stuff. People just don't want change =/

I, for one, think that technology over a certain age should be phased out. I also think that 64bit should be pushed mainstream. I do understand that there are those out there with the H/W that can't support 64bit and they should stay on the older OS's and let the rest of us move on.

[The_Wizard]

This is a good step forward, though I'm guessing it will still take a good few years after that is the standard before drives with 4k sectors are more dominant.

[Mr. Gibs]

Ugh. Companies already DO make XP drivers for new stuff. Obviously the cost of making it compatible is better because 50% of people still use XP.

I basically just reiterated what I've already said.

Edit: I never said anything about making new "older" drives.

You still aren't getting my point lol. I know companies still make devices for windows xp, but they shouldn't have to is all I'm saying.

And if new drives come out that make use of a new way of storing stuff, the companies shouldn't have to go the extra length of making them compatible for windows xp. And the only reason they have to is because of people who want to keep living in the past.

It really is time that OS was laid to rest.