Forum Home
PC World Chat
 
Thread ID: 107973 2010-03-09 17:39:00 New HDD format gary67 (56) PC World Chat
Post ID Timestamp Content User
865346 2010-03-09 17:39:00 The new hard drive formatting coming next year is explained here (news.bbc.co.uk) in simple terms gary67 (56)
865347 2010-03-09 18:11:00 So is it only NEW drives that can use this format or can I reformat my current drives to this new format? xyz823 (13649)
865348 2010-03-09 18:40:00 AFAIK, You can already reformat your current drives in this manner. See attached Chilling_Silence (9)
865349 2010-03-09 18:58:00 ...

What's so special here?

You could do this since the Win2k days... Or on a RIAD since way back when...
Cato (6936)
865350 2010-03-09 20:56:00 I thought NTFS was 4K by default? I guess this only affects anyone that has FAT16/32 or has changed the sector size themselves. autechre (266)
865351 2010-03-09 21:23:00 Guys... this isn't referring to the filesystem block size, as several posters here seem to think - it's referring to the actual sector size on the HDD.


...

What's so special here?

You could do this since the Win2k days... Or on a RIAD since way back when...No, you couldn't - nobody was making drives with a 4K sector layout back then. Sure, you could use a filesystem with 4K block allocation, but that's not the same thing.
Erayd (23)
865352 2010-03-09 21:43:00 Guys... this isn't referring to the filesystem block size, as several posters here seem to think - it's referring to the actual sector size on the HDD.

This. Yes, NTFS and many other disk formats allow you to select the file system cluster size, but the physical sectors on the drives have all been 512Bytes - until now, thanks WD (and presumably Seagate et al will be doing this as well).
inphinity (7274)
865353 2010-03-09 21:53:00 Bring on the bigger drives NOW!!! Gobe1 (6290)
865354 2010-03-09 22:11:00 Ah right, I knew I shouldn't have been posting so early in the morning. It all makes sense now, of course! Chilling_Silence (9)
1