Hard drive evolution could hit XP

[Mr. Gibs]

Yes, WD's 4K sector advanced format drives emulate themselves as 512B, but they do so blindingly; they are emulated as 512B drives under all operating systems, not just XP. And benchmarks (whether with a properly aligned drive under XP or 7) do not show a significant erformance difference either way.

Why would they have to be emulated as 512B when vista/7/snow leopard can read of 4k perfectly without requiring any alignment? That doesn't make any sense what so ever.

[Newinko]

Why would they have to be emulated as 512B when vista/7/snow leopard can read of 4k perfectly without requiring any alignment?

Compatibility. Other than the fact that compatibility with 4K drives is not yet flawless (article about Linux still having issues), if the drive doesn't emulate itself as 512B, it won't be compatible with Windows XP at all.

WD's advanced format drive emulates 512B at the hard drive controller level. Re-read AnandTech's article carefully:

Even though all operating systems will be seeing 512B sectors through the use of emulation technology on the drive controller, out of Windows only Win 6.x (Vista, 2008, Win7) and later have been programmed to take in to account the alignment issues we mentioned earlier.

Emulation will be turned off at a later point in time:

Farther down the road will be the exposure of 4K-sectors to the operating system itself. Linux and Win 6.x are set (and we believe that Mac OS X is too), the only limit right now is the desire to do a phased transition to make thing easier for legacy users. Since 4K-sector drives won?t work on Win 5.x at all, drive manufacturers can?t put them on the market so long as there?s a significant legacy base. 2014 ? the year that extended support ends for WinXP ? looks like a good year to finally complete the move to 4K sectors.

That doesn't make any sense what so ever.

Uncalled for.

[Mr. Gibs]

WD's advanced format drive emulates 512B at the hard drive controller level. Re-read AnandTech's article carefully:

Except the article listed was BBC tech and I didn't see any AnandTech article, so I didn't know. Hence, I apologize.

Also wouldn't that prove your test false? Because if all their drives are being emulated, shouldn't that mean it will be taking a slight performance hit? So then naturally there is no difference between xp and say windows 7.

Since 4K-sector drives won’t work on Win 5.x at all, drive manufacturers can’t put them on the market so long as there’s a significant legacy base. 2014 – the year that extended support ends for WinXP – looks like a good year to finally complete the move to 4K sectors.

So there we have it again, windows xp slowing down technological advances for the rest of us.

[Newinko]

Except the article listed was BBC tech and I didn't see any AnandTech article, so I didn't know. Hence, I apologize.

Also wouldn't that prove your test false? Because if all their drives are being emulated, shouldn't that mean it will be taking a slight performance hit? So then naturally there is no difference between xp and say windows 7.

It is hard to make direct comparisons, since WD's advanced format drive, WD10EARS, is faster than its non-advanced format predecessor, the WD10EADS, probably because it has 2 500GB platters (the WD10EADS has 3 333GB).

Point is, the performance hit is insignificant at best, and offset by other factors -- therefore the 10% performance hit mentioned in the BBC's article seems to be a bit of a stretch. (I haven't seen the 10% number mentioned anywhere else, so I don't know where they pulled that number from -- your guess is as good as mine.)

So there we have it again, windows xp slowing down technological advances for the rest of us.

Hard drive makers are not yet ready to cross off 60% of the market to disable 512B emulation just for very meager performance gains. It is a sensible decision and 512B emulation is a good compromise. Not to mention that, even with Windows XP off the list, the entire software ecosystem is not yet fully compatible with 4K sector drives.