Thread: The Truths 4K Advanced Format Hard Disks

We are confirm you have heard the hubbub about the upcoming 4K Advanced Format for hard disks, particularly as it is probably each latest high capacity hard disk product shipping through the end of this year will characteristic this latest part size. Western Digital saw our news piece and the many comments you, our readers, and found in touch to clarify what the new standard actually entails.


A plenty of hot air has been ejected currently about 4K AF's incompatibility, or that 4K AF disks will dumb down beyond a usable mention in Windows XP systems, 1 person still moaned that, 'Western Digital said I had acquire 7-11 per cent more space, but I do not acquire anything!' A lot of these frustrations are only easy misunderstandings or bogus statements.


WD needed to explain that the hard disk industry is not inevitably issuing 4K Advanced Format drives for clients (hence the subtle product launches, instead than fanfares and vast marketing campaigns). The 4K Advanced Format act is really a fundamental promote required to ensure future capacity raised - and through extension future function increases - are capable, instead than a move to deliver any tangible profit now.




While we are associating to Western Digital a lot in this content, it is valuable remembering that the entire hard disk industry will be altering this year. Western Digital is not alone in establishing latest 4K Advanced Format products; other hard disk companies will follow suit this year, although WD was the first with its 'EARS' Green drives previous December in the UK market.


Hence the floppy drive, disks have been split into parts, every allocated in 512 byte blocks, with an associated fault correction control (ECC) parts adjacent to every part. This has functioned well for the previous 25 or so years, and increments in hard disk information density have been got with several inventive type. It is incredible to imagine that we have gone from 1MB disks to having 500GB on a single 3.5in platter utilizing the similar common division of memory. However, the hard disk industry has just reached a point where it is no longer economically viable to maintain such small parts on such immensely dense hard disk platters.


Four KB information parts have a some advantages: the combination of eight 512 byte blocks with ECC assums up more place than an individual 4KB block with a single, if larger, ECC field. This means moving to a disk platter comprised of 4KB information sectors permits more information to be saved in the similar physical space. A bigger ECC area too permits for the utilize of longer code words, which are more effective.