Questions tagged [advanced-format]
Advanced Format refers to hard drives that use sector sizes of greater than 512 bytes. Most AF drives use 4096 byte sectors.
58
questions
25
votes
7
answers
32k
views
What's the point of hard drives reporting their physical sector size?
I have an SSD that can be configured to report its physical sector size to an OS in two different ways:
Option 1: Logical = 512 Bytes, Physical = 512 Bytes
Option 2: Logical = 512 Bytes, Physical = ...
- 11.4k
16
votes
1
answer
24k
views
Why are 4k reads in hdd/ssd benchmarks slower than writes?
There are several benchmark tools available to test the speed of a pc drive.
Here is an benchmark example of a SATA SSD:
Sequential Read : 718.498 MB/s
Sequential Write : 777.414 MB/s
Random Read ...
- 1,008
13
votes
4
answers
18k
views
Bitlocker won't initialize on a 4TB drive with 4K sectors
I'm trying to enable BitLocker on a 4TB drive with 4K physical sectors (Advanced Format) on a 64-bit Windows 7 box with SP1.
The drive is partitioned GPT (1 partition using all of the available ...
- 2,681
10
votes
4
answers
29k
views
Is it possible to set the logical sector size of a USB hard disk drive?
I have two supposedly identical 3TB Western Digital USB hard disk drives. One contains nearly the full 3TB of data. I want the other to be a backup of that data. There are lots of small files, so ...
- 286
10
votes
1
answer
4k
views
How would I force Debian to use the physical sector size on a hard disk?
I just purchased a few new 3TB WD drives. These have physical 4k sectors, but there is some sort of layer which is providing 512B logical sectors (see the partition table below).
In order to attempt ...
- 113
9
votes
2
answers
1k
views
How do I test to see if all writes to my hard drive are aligned to its 4k sectors?
I'm using Linux with 4 hard drives that use 4k sectors. There are several layers between my filesystem and the raw devices: Disks > Linux Raid 5 > dm-crypt > LVM.
Every resource I have found has ...
- 191
8
votes
4
answers
8k
views
How to convert the Western Digital "Ultrastar® DC HC530 14TB HDD" from 512e to 4Kn sector size? (In Windows 10)
Background
The Western Digital "Ultrastar® DC HC530 14TB HDD" (Model number: WUH721414ALE6L4)(SATA Interface) comes only in a 512e sector size by default.
According to the 2 Western Digital ...
- 81
7
votes
0
answers
2k
views
What causes this HDD sector damage pattern?
Out of curiosity, I ran GNU ddrescue on a Seagate ST1000LM024 HN-M101MBB hard drive with known bad sectors, and then I visualized the ddrescue mapfile with ddrescueview.
When I zoomed in, this ...
- 19.6k
6
votes
1
answer
17k
views
How can I get the physical sector size of a drive that doesn't have any recognized volumes?
Windows can tell me the logical and physical sector size of the drive responsible for a partition/volume via the fsutil fsinfo sectorinfo x: command (where x is my drive letter). How can I get this ...
- 41k
6
votes
1
answer
2k
views
Partition table independent of sector size
The plot
I have a WD10JPVT 1Tb disk inside an IcyBox IB-290StUS-B USB/esata enclosure.
When I connect the disk via USB, I get a 512 logical / 512 physical sector size.
When I connect the disk via ...
- 501
6
votes
2
answers
6k
views
Is my OCZ SSD aligned correctly?
I have an OCZ Agility 2 SSD with 40 GB of space. I use it as a system drive in Debian Linux ("Squeeze") and in my opinion it's really fast. I've read a lot on aligning partitions and file systems, and ...
Barney Gumble
6
votes
1
answer
503
views
Migrate Win7 upgrade from 63 sector to 4096 sector advanced format disk
If I use the Windows 7 backup on a system that has the 63 sector starting location and restore it to an advanced format 4096 sector system, will the restore create the starting sector at 63 or 4096?
- 61
5
votes
1
answer
7k
views
Advanced format partition alignment
I cloned a non Advanced Format drive (W7 64bit) to a new hard drive (Seagate) that was AF, the software I used supposedly does not support 4k very well (Todo Backup Free 3.5).
Is there a Windows ...
- 58.3k
5
votes
2
answers
464
views
Is it safe to overwrite LBA 2-2047
So back when I used WUBI before settling on using a VM, GRUB was installed (but I messed it up and had to reinstall everything (luckily I backed up)). That was back when I used Vista which starts at ...
- 627
5
votes
3
answers
12k
views
How to Clone Win7 from 512b sectors to 4096b sectors
I'm using a new Thinkpad and I'm trying to upgrade the drive from a 250GB to a 640GB. I grabbed a WD Scorpio Blue and a ByteCC USB/SATA adapter.
First I tried booting Linux and doing a dd if=/dev/...
- 1,417
5
votes
1
answer
872
views
Are 4k sectors more efficient for hard disk data transfer?
I have just obtained two hard drives which use 4k sectors, but report their physical sector size to the OS as only 512 bytes.
Does this mean that the OS must send eight requests to the drive to read ...
- 2,651
4
votes
4
answers
6k
views
logical sector size changes depending on whether it is attached via USB or direct SATA
I have a 3TB WD disk (in a My Book Essential external drive.) I used parted under Linux to partition it with a GPT disklabel and loaded it up with data from my laptop through the USB cable. Then I ...
- 163
4
votes
1
answer
3k
views
4k emulation sata usb controllers
I have an external drive. Inside is a Seagate Barracuda (ST3000DM001 (Datasheet)). With its original controller (Intenso) its working fine. But with another controller (AS-Media) its partition layout ...
- 243
4
votes
2
answers
11k
views
Filesystem config for 4k sector drive that reports 512 byte sectors [duplicate]
Possible Duplicate:
Western Digital Green drive from 512 byte sectors (jumpered) to 4k byte sectors (removal of jumper)
I have just purchased two Western Digital WD20EARS disks and discovered ...
- 2,651
4
votes
2
answers
1k
views
Linux and Windows report different physical sector size for Intel Optane SSD DC P4801X Series
I have a Intel Optane P4801X. It is a NVMe storage device.
In Linux, the physical sector size reported is 512 bytes:
$ sgdisk -p /dev/nvme0n1
Disk /dev/nvme0n1: 195371568 sectors, 93.2 GiB
Model: ...
- 1,041
3
votes
2
answers
1k
views
Does the advanced format tool bundled by manufacturers actually do anything which mkntfs doesn't?
I recently bought a new drive (specifically, a 2TB Samsung Spinpoint) that says on the label that it supports advanced format, and that I should download the tool from their site.
Unless I'm missing ...
- 3,520
3
votes
3
answers
4k
views
Can Windows XP be installed on a partition that starts at sector 64 (on Advanced Format 4k drives)?
I could manually create 4k aligned partition (with linux tools, eg. live cd), that would start at LBA sector 64 (not at sector 63 as default in Windows XP installer). I do not remember, but I guess ...
- 181
3
votes
2
answers
5k
views
4k hard drives freebsd gpart and zfs
I have 3 hdd, with the next camcotrol identify.
root@cirmos:/root # camcontrol identify ada1
pass2: <WDC WD10EZEX-00RKKA0 80.00A80> ATA-8 SATA 3.x device
pass2: 300.000MB/s transfers (SATA 2.x, ...
- 877
3
votes
2
answers
1k
views
Hard Drive Advance Format 512e Compatibility with 4K Native OS
I would like to understand the compatibility of the Advance Format drives with existing OS's, particularly if the Hard Drive has 512 emulation (AF 512e).
I understand the basics of how the 512 ...
- 244
3
votes
2
answers
1k
views
Windows 7, raid 1 with advanced format drive
I had a nice software raid 1 (using windows 7 raid) working when one of my drives failed.
I replaced it by another one (WD blue 1 TB) which uses 4k sectors, and this makes windows unhappy (Cannot ...
- 173
3
votes
1
answer
1k
views
What is my miniport's service name?
i am trying to query the physical sector size of my drive using fsutil:
C:\Windows\system32>fsutil fsinfo ntfsinfo c:
NTFS Volume Serial Number : 0x78cc11b2cc116c1e
Version : ...
- 22.2k
2
votes
3
answers
7k
views
512B to 4KiB (Advanced Format) HDD cloning with dd
What is the best practice to clone with a dd an existing 512-bytes-per-sector HDD (whole disk, not specific partitions) to a modern 4-kibibytes-per-sector Advanced Format drive? What options should be ...
- 1,241
2
votes
1
answer
2k
views
Extended partition does not start on physical sector boundary on 512e (emulated 4k) hard-drive
My fdisk -l output tells me that my extended partition (sda4) is misaligned. But partitions inside it are aligned (their start sector is divisible by 8). Will the misaligned extended partition somehow ...
- 159
2
votes
5
answers
4k
views
Is it possible for the filesystem's logical block size to be less than the physical sector size?
Let's say we have a block device (eg. Hard Drive) with 4096 bytes sector size and no 512 bytes emulation is available (The hard drive only understands units of 4096 bytes size).
Is is possible to ...
- 351
2
votes
1
answer
1k
views
HGST 4kn support on Windows 10 with Z97 and Asmedia?
We've been trying hard and failed to get an HGST Ultrastar 2TB 7K6000 SATA 4KN to work on Windows 8.1 Pro and 10. Windows reports an inaccurate drive size, and Disk Management fails to initialize the ...
- 121
2
votes
2
answers
6k
views
Performance of RAID 5 with mdadm
I have set up a software-raid 5 with mdadm on a 1.3 GHz AMD Neo 36L dual core machine using 3 1.5 TB Seagate Barracude Green drives (4k sectors). The chunk size of the raid is 512 KB. On top of the ...
- 23
2
votes
0
answers
497
views
Unable to read contents on an Advanced Format disk when using some USB docking stations
I have Linux Mint 17.3 (based on Ubuntu 14.04) with 4.4.0 kernel.
I own a Western Digital Caviar Green WD10EARX hard drive with 1TB capacity. The label on this drive says it is an "Advanced Format" ...
- 159
2
votes
1
answer
3k
views
Determining the bs value for dd
I am using an external 1 TB WD hard drive with Advanced Format (4096 bytes sector size). What is the recommended value for the bs option in dd? Should I use dd bs=4096? And if I get this value "wrong" ...
- 127
2
votes
1
answer
2k
views
MacOSX: Truecrypt partition on HDDs with larger sector size than 512 bytes
I have an external USB 3.0 HDD which uses a sector size larger than 512 bytes (4kB). In Linux, I created a truecrypt encrypted partition on it, which works fine on any Linux or Windows Computer. ...
- 163
2
votes
2
answers
1k
views
Are there partition recovery software available that support 4k sector drives?
I have several 2TB Western Digital EARS hard drives in my WHS 2011 server that suddenly became "not initialized".
I'm currently trying TestDisk, but after one quick analyze I get the following ...
- 357
2
votes
1
answer
4k
views
Will 4096 bytes alignment benefit on SSD with 512 bytes sector size?
My SSD physical sector size is 512 bytes. Will 4096 byte alignment benefit in IO operations? Currently the 1st partition (Recovery) has starting offset at 32 256 bytes according to msinfo32. The ...
- 21
1
vote
2
answers
4k
views
Advanced format
I read this in a superuser.com question:
The problem is that "Advanced Format" drives that simulate a 512-byte sector to the operating system but actually work with 4-kilobyte sectors internally is ...
- 35
1
vote
1
answer
2k
views
1-byte file takes up 2 MB (yes, megabytes) on 6 TB exFAT Veracrypt volume. Why?
Screenshot:
File properties of file that takes up 2MB of disk space for 1 byte of data:
The drive is a 6TB single partition, mounted via Veracrypt and formatted as exFAT. The sector size on my 2TB ...
- 173
1
vote
1
answer
2k
views
Trouble figuring out optimal alignment of multiple partitions on a 931.5 GiB external Advanced Format HDD while in Linux
SUMMARY
I have a Dell Inspiron 17-5767 laptop with a 1TB internal disk I've allowed the originally shipped Windows 10 to continue to have and dominate all to itself (it's my gaming OS). Additionally ...
- 56
1
vote
1
answer
17k
views
Freeware MBR to GPT conversion in Windows without data loss [duplicate]
I recently had to rehouse an 8 TB drive due to damage to the micro B socket. It has only ever been one partition. Windows 8 and Windows 10 incorrectly identify it as being split into 3 partitions. One ...
- 443
1
vote
0
answers
67
views
Office 2010: Customizing keyboard shortcuts for advanced find options
I repeatedly do the following to find text with a certain color in Word 2010:
Navigation > Advanced find > More > Find "Format" > Font > Font color > Custom
and then type the color ...
- 337
1
vote
0
answers
151
views
Do new USB flash drives use advanced format (AF)?
I just want to know if that new feature (AF - advanced format) on some hard drives, is present on flash (USB external disk) drives as well. I'm a little bit confused because a simple check on /dev/...
- 11
1
vote
1
answer
2k
views
Cloning a 512 sector size to Advanced Format WD Black drive
I have a old WD Black drive that is not Advanced Format. Due to it having one bad sector in a unused area I need to clone it to a new hard drive to avoid losing data. Unfortunately the same model of ...
- 253
1
vote
1
answer
557
views
3TB HDD showing 512 logical sector size when connected via SATA [duplicate]
I have a Seagate Expansion 3TB external hard drive with data on it, and I wanted to get at the drive inside the enclosure and make it an internal drive. I'm using Windows 8, so the drive was being ...
- 153
1
vote
2
answers
1k
views
Partitioning Options for Advanced Format drive
I bought two 2TB advanced format drives.
One of them is a 2TB WD Caviar Green WD20EARX, the other is a 2TB Seagate Barracuda ST2000DM001.
I have the following questions:
What is the best partition ...
- 203
0
votes
2
answers
607
views
Why is my magnetic hard drive exceedingly slow?
Writes to my WD Caviar Green 2TB hard drive are exceedingly slow. When dpkg is setting up packages atop reports speeds of between 0.5 and 1 MB/s. AHCI is enabled in my bios. I bought the drive new. ...
- 8,407
0
votes
1
answer
339
views
HDD showing up in Windows via USB, but not via SATA
Possible sector size issue? Leftover QNAP/EXT4 format weirdness?
I have been migrating drives from a QNAP NAS to a new Windows 11 Pro based server. The two drives giving me problems are the 10TB ...
- 11
0
votes
1
answer
32
views
How can I filter multiple numbers using Advanced Filter option?
Please help me understand how do I filter multiple numbers using Advanced Filter option?
Filtering text works for me, but not the numbers. Is there any format required?
- 1
0
votes
1
answer
119
views
Time format of Pomodoro in LibreOffice Calc
I'm using LibreOffice Calc in Windows 7 and I'd like to write a formula that, given a decimal number, converts it to hours and minutes. For instance I have this:
cell E3 is =($B$3*25/60) i.e. it ...
- 101
0
votes
1
answer
13k
views
Is it safe to force a dismount to format a volume in Windows?
I am using format command in cmd to format a USB flash drive.
M:\>format /FS:FAT32 /Q
Required parameter missing -
M:\>format M: /FS:FAT32 /Q
Insert new disk for drive M:
and press ENTER when ...
- 20.8k