Hard drive evolution could hit Microsoft XP users

littlescrimbler

littlescrimbler

littlescrimbler

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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.
Floppy disks, Eyewire
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.
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http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8557144.stm
 
That sounds interesting. Would you still be able to install current programs and games on these 4k sector drives?
 
bhavv said:
That sounds interesting. Would you still be able to install current programs and games on these 4k sector drives?
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Yes no problem - the drives still expose the data in the same 512 byte sectors.

The only issue is that with older operating systems that don't optimise partition alignment, you need to either set a jumper on the drive or use a utility to align partitions for optimum performance (in the same way you need to for SSD).
 
I doubt it will bother XP users who have a reason to stay on XP.

Won't be difficult to avoid buying new drives that will act gimped on your OS.
 
PhillyDee said:
Its a dated operating system for those who want to live in the dark ages, and have only just uninstalled windows 95.
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A lot of businesses are still on XP. Large corporations tend to wait until after an os has become desupported before even thinking about upgrading, and then the time it takes to test all the corporate software on the new OS (a lot of companies are actually thinking of going to Vista :eek: as they have done most of their integration testing on Vista, before W7 came out)

So there hare still millions of Corporate users still on XP.


Is this change limited to SATA / PATA or will SCSI be impacted too? Again there is a lot of "Ancient" Enterprise hardware and mainframes that are most likely on OSs that will not cope with the 4k sector size.
 
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Manlove is my forte said:
A lot of businesses are still on XP. Large corporations tend to wait until after an os has become desupported before even thinking about upgrading, and then the time it takes to test all the corporate software on the new OS (a lot of companies are actually thinking of going to Vista :eek: as they have done most of their integration testing on Vista, before W7 came out)

So there hare still millions of Corporate users still on XP.
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Fair point. I was more having a dig at home users :D.
Then again, I have XP Pro on my laptop, it came with it. No reason to upgrade!
 
Manlove is my forte said:
A lot of businesses are still on XP. Large corporations tend to wait until after an os has become desupported before even thinking about upgrading, and then the time it takes to test all the corporate software on the new OS (a lot of companies are actually thinking of going to Vista :eek: as they have done most of their integration testing on Vista, before W7 came out)

So there hare still millions of Corporate users still on XP.


Is this change limited to SATA / PATA or will SCSI be impacted too? Again there is a lot of "Ancient" Enterprise hardware and mainframes that are most likely on OSs that will not cope with the 4k sector size.
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Spot on there, we replace 18 Gbyte SCSI drives in some systems with specially de-stroked 73 Gbyte dirves because the old controllers can't cope with all the extra tracks.

SCSI discs are much smaller than SATA at present, though SAS are catching up.
 
The thing is I really don't think this is going to be that big a deal. It's only new HDs that will be affected, rather than say, some kind of OS update that impacts performance on all old drives.

So, the only problem really would be if the supply of 'old style' 512k sector drives dries up, and people are still wanting to buy new drives (it wouldn't surprise me to see OEMs supplying corporate markets stocking up on older drives).

The problem with these type of stories is you get people wading in saying "THERE IS STILL A NEED FOR WINDOWS XP!!!!". But that isn't the point under discussion here, the argument isn't about whether XP is defunct or not, the argument should be about whether having a 10% performance hit on write speed for new drives under XP is really that serious a problem.

Actually, the more you think about it, the less big a deal it is. So what if brand spanking new drives get a 10% performance hit under WinXP? The chances are, most systems running XP likely have older HDs anyway, my workstation at work has an 80GB HD that is about 5 years old I guess. Even running at 90% speed, a brand spanking new 2011 drive, with huge platters and 32MB+ cache is likely going to outperform a lot of existing drives in older systems anyway. Modern HDs have like 100MB/sec write speed, compared to around 60MB/sec in the mid90s.

I think of far more interest would be whether this issue affects Windows Server 2003 as well. There is much more of a need to for larger drives on server environments relative to workstations.
 
Well im still stuck with xp for my htpc/tv recording pc's so when I get my arse in gear I shall be testing an 640gb western digital green power which will need aligning under xp, I shall soon know if somethings wrong or not.
 
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