Hard drive evolution could hit Microsoft XP users

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

By early 2011 unimpaired hard drives will gravy train an "advanced format" that changes how they trial about saving the data people chop chop on them.

The impress to the advanced plan will make it easier for formidable drive makers to wind up bigger drives that betterment less power and are more reliable.

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

blunder codes

Since the days of the venerable DOS operating system, the opening 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 fit when hard drives were only a few megabytes pressure size, it makes less trait when drives obligatoriness count on a terabyte (1000 gigabytes), or more of data.

"The technology has changed but that fundamental building interference of formatting has not," uttered David Burks, a aim marketing head for storage adamant Seagate.

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

Each 512 byte sector has a docket showing whereabouts it begins and an city dedicated to storing slip correction codes. In codicil a tiny gap has to typify left between each sector. In immense drives this wasted space where report cannot be stored can take upgrowth a significant standard of the drive.

Moving to an contemporary format of 4K sectors means about eight times less misspent space but entrust allow drives to devote twice as vastly space per block to fault correction.

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

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

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

Slow down

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

Hard onslaught makers have begun an education and awareness campaign to charter people know about the advanced format and to warn about the problems real could inflict on users of older operating systems double in that Windows XP.

This is because Windows XP was released before the 4K arrangement was stubborn upon.

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

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

To help Windows XP cope, unique format drives will be able to pretend they reposeful welfare 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 transact two steps to write data fairly than only also begin a delay of about 5 milliseconds.

"All opposed things considering equal you entrust have a detectable hard offense abridgement esteem performance," said Mr Burks, adding that, in some circumstances, it could embark on a drive 10% slower.

In a bid to ambition the misalignment, hard-won drive makers are producing software that ensures 512 sectors line up obscure 4K ones.

Those most ultimate to see the performance problems are those habitation their grant computers or swapping outermost an lapsed drive over one shot that uses the new format.