[lotuseclat79]

Hard drive evolution could hit Microsoft XP users.

Hard drives are about to undergo one of the biggest format shifts in 30 years (by end of January 2011).

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.

-- Tom

[Wino]

Morning Tom,

What am I missing here? I don't see the problem for XP now or the near futrure nor do I see the need to revamp HDD. I thought 64-bit OS's made higher RAM visible and usable. While I understand the real estate issue (say 160GB HDD only shows up as 147GB +/- the new would show 160GB - big whoopie). With static RAM HD's on the horizon I would presume all will remain backward compatible - anything else would be suicide IMHO. Again, am I missing something or is my skepticism valid?

[JohnWill]

Since all these drives will offer compatibility emulation, I also fail to see the issue.

[TechGuy]

I think the problem is really that the compatibility mode will slow 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.

[redoak]

I read that article at about 0300 EST, USA! Apparently no need for Xpers to be alarmed.

{redoak}

[loserOlimbs]

I can see emulation as being a problem as well. Perhaps with semi-modern PC no noticeable difference.

What I see as a benefit is that you get more space back, and a better chance of recovering lost data. A 1TB drive still won't have 1TB available after the decimal - Binary conversion... but your DVD on your hard drive will take less space since it will use less blocks and therefore less slack between blocks.

[JohnWill]

Originally Posted by TechGuy

I think the problem is really that the compatibility mode will slow performance...

Well, anyone still running XP in 2012 or later probably isn't worried about speed. Truthfully, I'm not sure for typical disk operations that the speed will be impacted all that much. For sequential reads or a block of data, which are a majority of disk accesses for most users, the only overhead is the internal buffering in the disk drive to emulate the small sectors. Writing could be slower, since they might have to fetch the sector before writing it, it'll be interesting to see how they handle that.

[namenotfound]

Snow Leopard can already do this, what's with this 2011 stuff? It made the switch from binary to decimal, so my 120GB hard drive shows AS 120...

[tomdkat]

Originally Posted by namenotfound

Snow Leopard can already do this, what's with this 2011 stuff?

By the end of 2011, these new drives will be the ones mostly available and those with "legacy" systems will be SOL or close to it.

Peace...

[JohnWill]

I've already seen these drives stuck into stuff like NAS boxes with no ill effects, I doubt this is going to be the burning issue that you folks seem to think it is. There could be some performance impact, but the world won't end.

[tomdkat]

Originally Posted by JohnWill

There could be some performance impact, but the world won't end.

It most certainly will.... but in 2012.. John Cusack even knows it!

Peace...

[namenotfound]

Originally Posted by tomdkat

It most certainly will.... but in 2012.. John Cusack even knows it!

Peace...

That was such an awful movie...

[peck1234]

I cant wait to hardrives are the dead format...

We really need to move forward to SSD...

[hewee]

Sounds like what Peter Norton said in "Need for Speed" from years ago.
How the the Fat, sectors don't all have to be the same. Even said that the older Fat like for 95 was better and should be used for your OS and then have other drives for other programs you install and do things like first part of another drive as you swap file etc.

[JohnWill]

Originally Posted by peck1234

I cant wait to hardrives are the dead format...

We really need to move forward to SSD...

Well, we need a bit more development in that area as well as some major price reductions! So far, most of the SSD's are still slower than hard disks writing. The performance actually seems to vary all over the map, as well as with different benchmarks. I can wait another year or two for the second generation.