4k hard drives - problems for XP users

[Guest theeldergeek]

FYI

 

BBC News - Hard drive evolution could hit Microsoft XP users

[sparkeh]

Interesting read.

I presume that if there are enough people still using XP then something will be sorted out?

[localzuk]

So, yet more reason to update from XP to something more modern. They're stacking up now...

[stevenwba]

first ive read about that, interesting, and as said above, hard to stay on win xp now

[sparkeh]

So, yet more reason to update from XP to something more modern. They're stacking up now...

 

Yeah, making some headway in persuading the management to change OS from XP, the more reasons the better.

[Michael]

Makes you wonder however whether there's genuine demand for this. You can buy 2 terabyte hard drives for quite reasonable prices. 2TB = 2,000,000MB's and 11% of that is 220GB. Surely manufacturers need to change hard drives completely rather than focusing on just the format.

[hakko]

It would still be compatible with XP, just slightly slower access through emulation.

 

I've seen few users require more than 80GB hard drives.

[sted]

xp lets you chnage it ive just looked it just defaults to 512 bytes other options are 1024/2048/4096 at least on this pc

[mjs_mjs]

How much more are they planing to put on one disk, i thought 2TB was enough.

 

from [ame=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NTFS]NTFS - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia[/ame]

 

Maximum Volume Size

In theory, the maximum NTFS volume size is 264−1 clusters. However, the maximum NTFS volume size as implemented in Windows XP Professional is 232−1 clusters. For example, using 64 KB clusters, the maximum NTFS volume size is 256 TB minus 64 KB. Using the default cluster size of 4 KB, the maximum NTFS volume size is 16 TB minus 4 KB. (Both of these are vastly higher than the 128 GB limit lifted in Windows XP SP1.) Because partition tables on master boot record (MBR) disks only support partition sizes up to 2 TB, dynamic or GPT volumes must be used to create NTFS volumes over 2 TB. Booting from a GPT volume to a Windows environment requires a system with EFI and 64-bit support.[36]

[maniac]

xp lets you chnage it ive just looked it just defaults to 512 bytes other options are 1024/2048/4096 at least on this pc

 

That's allocation units - we're talking a layer below that; the actual sectors on the drive itself. An allocation unit or data cluster can be made up of multiple sectors which is why you have the options available in windows, the smallest you can go is a single sector, i.e 512 bytes.

 

Under the new standard, the smallest you could go would be 4kb instead of 512 bytes like now.

 

Mike.

Edited March 9, 2010 by maniac

[srochford]

The article talks about the emulation perhaps causing a 10% decrease in writing speed. I assume that's compared to non-emulated on the same drive. If so, I wonder how much "real" difference it will make? Generally, the increased data density means you can retrieve the data more quickly so compared to an older drive you could find that there's no real change in speed.

 

I've no doubt we'll continue to get bigger drives for a while yet and people will fill them. I think the first hard drive I used (on an IBM XT) was 5MB and that was massive compared to 360k floppies! We're now nearly a million times that size and on it goes :-)

[mjs_mjs]

I doubt this will cause a problem for anyone with XP. In all likelyhood, if they're still using XP they wont need more than 4TB, which is quite easily fitted into a machine using 2*2TB drives. If they need more than this (like me), networkable products will fill this gap in the market.

[cookie_monster]

I doubt this will cause a problem for anyone with XP. In all likelyhood, if they're still using XP they wont need more than 4TB, which is quite easily fitted into a machine using 2*2TB drives. If they need more than this (like me), networkable products will fill this gap in the market.

 

 

Exactly, most people on XP now will probably not need to change the HD before 2014 at which point XP is end of life so they'll have to change, or just accept the 10% performance hit.