"Advanced Format" drives with 4k sectors

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July 15, 2010 05:05 PM

Categories: Hard Drives / Storage

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unkilbeeg

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Joined: 07/15/2010

I've been considering the Pogoplug in conjunction with one of the new "advanced format" drives by Western Digitital and others. Apparently these need to be "aligned" if they're connected to an older OS. Vista and Win7 apparently work (mostly) without being aligned, as do versions of Linux newer than 2.6.31. MacOS since Tiger works without being aligned.

Since the OS that is directly connected to the drive is that in the Pogoplug, is alignment necessary, or will the Pogoplug OS handle this correctly? Or is this only an issue if I repartition the drive?

I understand that the performance difference between an aligned drive and one which has not been is dramatic.

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unkilbeeg

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August 13, 2010 8:03 PM

Anybody?

These 4k drives are the future -- I'd expect all large capacity drives to be heading this way very soon. Do we know if they'll work?

crimsonredmk

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August 21, 2010 4:40 PM

They won't work - http://www.pogoplugged.com/forum/thread/14315/Can-we-use-3TB-hard-drives/

unkilbeeg

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August 23, 2010 9:23 AM

Mmm. Well, they'll probably work, but there will be problems.

If you partition the drive with a tool that does not understand 4k sector alignment, the drive will work but there will be a huge slowdown.

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