Hard drive evolution could hit Microsoft XP users
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From: Yousuf Khan on 9 Mar 2010 16:28 BBC News - Hard drive evolution could hit Microsoft XP users "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. " http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8557144.stm
From: Andrew Hamilton on 12 Mar 2010 02:24 On Tue, 09 Mar 2010 16:28:08 -0500, Yousuf Khan <bbbl67(a)spammenot.yahoo.com> wrote: >BBC News - Hard drive evolution could hit Microsoft XP users >"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. " >http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8557144.stm Is there any way to do a low-level format on an older drive so that it now has 4K sectors? Way, way, way back when. Floppy diskette sectors started out at 128B, the moved to 256B. IBM pioneered 512B sectors when they brought out the PC in 1981. Of course, with the right parameters sent to the FD 1765 controller chip, any system could read the 512B sector diskettes.
From: Arno on 12 Mar 2010 08:05 Andrew Hamilton <Ahamilton90900(a)yahoo.com> wrote: > On Tue, 09 Mar 2010 16:28:08 -0500, Yousuf Khan > <bbbl67(a)spammenot.yahoo.com> wrote: >>BBC News - Hard drive evolution could hit Microsoft XP users >>"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. " >>http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8557144.stm > Is there any way to do a low-level format on an older drive so that it > now has 4K sectors? Well, you could try that together with a firmware patch for an old MFM drive ;-) Seriously, no. Even while SCSI drives theoretically can do this, in practice they just lump sectors together and emulate the larger ones. > Way, way, way back when. Floppy diskette sectors started out at 128B, > the moved to 256B. IBM pioneered 512B sectors when they brought out > the PC in 1981. Of course, with the right parameters sent to the FD > 1765 controller chip, any system could read the 512B sector diskettes. Floppies have stepper motors, which makes software formatting very easy. Modern HDDs have a linear morto type that has stepless positioning. (The mentioned MFM drives also used stepper motors.) That means AFAIK modern HDDs cannot be formatted by themselves, but this is either done with extra head or with positioning support equipment only attached to the drive in manufacturing. Arno -- Arno Wagner, Dr. sc. techn., Dipl. Inform., CISSP -- Email: arno(a)wagner.name GnuPG: ID: 1E25338F FP: 0C30 5782 9D93 F785 E79C 0296 797F 6B50 1E25 338F ---- Cuddly UI's are the manifestation of wishful thinking. -- Dylan Evans
From: JW on 12 Mar 2010 11:24 On Fri, 12 Mar 2010 05:44:12 -0800 Ed Light <nobody(a)nobody.there> wrote in Message id: <4b9a44ff$0$10555$c3e8da3(a)news.astraweb.com>: >WD has a utility to align for XP. Yup, and the current version of the utility won't work on an uninitialized drive. I had to connect it to a USB adapter and initialize it on a system running XP before the utility would see the drive.
From: Yousuf Khan on 12 Mar 2010 11:48 Andrew Hamilton wrote: > Is there any way to do a low-level format on an older drive so that it > now has 4K sectors? The days of low-level formatting are long gone. > Way, way, way back when. Floppy diskette sectors started out at 128B, > the moved to 256B. IBM pioneered 512B sectors when they brought out > the PC in 1981. Of course, with the right parameters sent to the FD > 1765 controller chip, any system could read the 512B sector diskettes. That's because the controllers for those devices were basically the system's CPU itself. These days they have their own intelligence, and it's more like a couple of peers talking over a network these days. Yousuf Khan
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