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Hard drives with 4kb sector-size are now available


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Guest wsxedcrfv

For background, see here: http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=3691

Western Digital appears to be shipping a 1tb drive with 4kb sector-size (WD10EARS).

The article gives a bit of info about Windows compatibility - but (naturally) nothing regarding win-9x/me. It does say that XP probably won't be compatible with these drives.

I'm wondering if it's time to start stocking up on drives with 512 bytes/sector before they're no longer available ...

What would be necessary to make win-98 compatible with 4kb sector size?

How does FAT32 allow for 4kb sector size - or does it have to?

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What would be necessary to make win-98 compatible with 4kb sector size?

How does FAT32 allow for 4kb sector size - or does it have to?

AFAIK, there won't be a problem with Filesystems, the bootsector has a field for Sector size (or "Bytes per Sector"), but rather with a number of OS/apps that "assume" that a sector is 512 bytes.

Offset 0x0B is in FAT12/16/32 and NTFS a two bytes field (thus allowing as much as FFFF/65536 bytes per sector)

Of course it is very probable that a number of things may be bugged simply because they "ignore" this setting, as the 0002/512 has been there since the dawn of PC's.

jaclaz

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 I think it will take a long time to fase out the 512 byte sectors. There are no compatible biosses, so you won't be able to boot from a 4k sector disk. The standard 'IBM-compatible' partition table relies on 512b sectors.

Maybe FAT32 is already compatible. I own a 1024 byte sectorsize usb-stick (actually an el-cheapo mp3 player), which is formatted FAT16. W98 has no problems accessing it.

But I couldn't create a partitiontable on it, using linux, while other usb sticks are no problem.

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Windows 9x VFAT.VXD recognizes 512B, 1KB, 2KB and 4KB Sector sizes. How well it supports them will have to be tested.

I may rewrite my BOOTMAN and High Capacity Disk Patch (HCDP) to simulate 4KB Sectors to find out.

If Windows 9x does not support 4KB Sectors then I will develop a BOOTMAN and HCDP Package that will simulate 512B Sectors.

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Unless I'm missing something here, 98 runs fine on drives formatted with 4KB clusters. When I repartitioned this unit with Partition Magic, I made the partition cluster size 4KB. 98 installed on it normally and runs fine.

You are not missing anything, you are confusing sector size with cluster size. :w00t:

Which earns you a C- :ph34r:

And one hour in the corner behind the blackboard. ;)

jaclaz

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Of course it is very probable that a number of things may be bugged simply because they "ignore" this setting, as the 0002/512 has been there since the dawn of PC's.

jaclaz

I'm also curious whether IO.SYS really observes that bootsector setting, or simply 'ignores' it.

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I have done some experimenting using a DDO that simulates a 4KB Logical Sector Hard Drive.

IO.SYS needs patches to increase some buffers to handle the larger Sectors and to recognize the Sector Length field in the Boot Sector's BPB.

I was able to manually setup a FAT16 partition on the Drive and use it. SCANDISK and CHKDSK appear to work properly.

Windows was unable to use it. Even before the GUI was loaded, I could see that it had miscomputed the FAT offset. Creating a FAT header at the miscomputed address did not help either.

It appears that it would be simpler for me to create a DDO that simulates a 512B Logical Sector Hard Drive when the 4KB Sector Hard Drives become generally available. I already have tools to minimize misaligned reads and writes.

Edited by rloew
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Completed DOS research.

FAT16 and FAT32 Filesystems can be used, and booted from, on a 4KB per Sector Hard Drive with only a few modifications to IO.SYS.

CHKDSK and SCANDISK appear to work normally. FORMAT does not.

I have upgraded my RFDISK Program and am updating my RFORMAT Program.

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  • 2 months later...
With a few modifcations Windows 9X can handle 4KB Sector Hard Drives. This allows Partitions up to 16TiB. DOS can handle 16KB Sectors and up to 64TiB Partitions.
Which of the Win98-compatible partition-related software Partition Magic v8.01 Build 1274, Paragon Partition Manager v9.0.4156, Partition Table Doctor v3.5, Acronis Disk Director v10 build 2089 or Ghost v11.0.2 can handle 4kb sector size? System Commander can't according to their docu.
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With a few modifcations Windows 9X can handle 4KB Sector Hard Drives. This allows Partitions up to 16TiB. DOS can handle 16KB Sectors and up to 64TiB Partitions.
Which of the Win98-compatible partition-related software Partition Magic v8.01 Build 1274, Paragon Partition Manager v9.0.4156, Partition Table Doctor v3.5, Acronis Disk Director v10 build 2089 or Ghost v11.0.2 can handle 4kb sector size? System Commander can't according to their docu.

I doubt that any of them can handle 4KB Logical Sector Drives. I upgraded my RFDISK and RFORMAT to support up to 16KB Logical Sectors.

Fortunately 4KB Logical Sector Drives are not likely to appear for some time.

The so called "Advanced Format" Drives from Western Digital use a 4KB Physical Sector internally but are still 512 Byte Logical Sector Drives.

These drives can be used with any software, but will not perform optimally if not aligned properly. Western Digital's Align Utility, or using the jumper on the Drive, only facilitate alignment. They only work for XP and above.

To use "Advanced Format" Drives with Windows 98 you can use any Partitioner, but will need a customized Formatter. I plan to add an alignment option to my RFORMAT Program to facilitate alignment.

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With a few modifcations Windows 9X can handle 4KB Sector Hard Drives. This allows Partitions up to 16TiB. DOS can handle 16KB Sectors and up to 64TiB Partitions.
Which of the Win98-compatible partition-related software Partition Magic v8.01 Build 1274, Paragon Partition Manager v9.0.4156, Partition Table Doctor v3.5, Acronis Disk Director v10 build 2089 or Ghost v11.0.2 can handle 4kb sector size? System Commander can't according to their docu.

I doubt that any of them can handle 4KB Logical Sector Drives. I upgraded my RFDISK and RFORMAT to support up to 16KB Logical Sectors.

Fortunately 4KB Logical Sector Drives are not likely to appear for some time.

The so called "Advanced Format" Drives from Western Digital use a 4KB Physical Sector internally but are still 512 Byte Logical Sector Drives.

These drives can be used with any software, but will not perform optimally if not aligned properly. Western Digital's Align Utility, or using the jumper on the Drive, only facilitate alignment. They only work for XP and above.

To use "Advanced Format" Drives with Windows 98 you can use any Partitioner, but will need a customized Formatter. I plan to add an alignment option to my RFORMAT Program to facilitate alignment.

I know this is a 98 forum. But, your comment "They only work for XP and above." begs the question... how about 2K? Just wondering, as it is one of my oses, that I intend to keep and use for those instances I need Windows. Maybe, I should start laying up some drives if 2K will have issues. Thanks in advance.

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With a few modifcations Windows 9X can handle 4KB Sector Hard Drives. This allows Partitions up to 16TiB. DOS can handle 16KB Sectors and up to 64TiB Partitions.
Which of the Win98-compatible partition-related software Partition Magic v8.01 Build 1274, Paragon Partition Manager v9.0.4156, Partition Table Doctor v3.5, Acronis Disk Director v10 build 2089 or Ghost v11.0.2 can handle 4kb sector size? System Commander can't according to their docu.

I doubt that any of them can handle 4KB Logical Sector Drives. I upgraded my RFDISK and RFORMAT to support up to 16KB Logical Sectors.

Fortunately 4KB Logical Sector Drives are not likely to appear for some time.

The so called "Advanced Format" Drives from Western Digital use a 4KB Physical Sector internally but are still 512 Byte Logical Sector Drives.

These drives can be used with any software, but will not perform optimally if not aligned properly. Western Digital's Align Utility, or using the jumper on the Drive, only facilitate alignment. They only work for XP and above.

To use "Advanced Format" Drives with Windows 98 you can use any Partitioner, but will need a customized Formatter. I plan to add an alignment option to my RFORMAT Program to facilitate alignment.

I know this is a 98 forum. But, your comment "They only work for XP and above." begs the question... how about 2K? Just wondering, as it is one of my oses, that I intend to keep and use for those instances I need Windows. Maybe, I should start laying up some drives if 2K will have issues. Thanks in advance.

I don't use 2K so I have no idea. Western Digital does not list 2K in it's compatability list.

As I said, the current Drives only have Sector alignment issues, so a suitable formatter will work. I have already upgraded my RFORMAT Program to properly align Partitions for use with Windows 9X. It may work for 2K as well.

4KB Logical Sector Drivers are not yet available. They will probably break most OSes as well as most BIOSes. So I doubt they will be coming soon.

Edited by rloew
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