Hard drives are about to undergo a change from the present format to an advanced format early next year. All hard drive manufacturers have agreed to adopt the new format by the end of January 2011 through the International Disk Drive Equipment and Materials Association (IDEMA). The new changes will make it easier for hard discs to save data thus resulting in better use of power and reliability. Presently, hard drives are formatted into standard blocks of 512 bytes while advances in technology has seen the production of drives that can hold up to one terabyte of data hence resulting in a lot of spaces being wasted per block.
The new format will see a move to an advanced format of 4K sectors thus resulting in better performance, efficiency and error handling. Unfortunately, older versions of many operating systems were not configured to handle 4K hard disc formats therefore computer users who swap an old drive for the 4K ones will be potentially faced with compatibility problems. However, computer users with operating systems that were released after September 2009 such as Windows 7, Vista, OS X Tiger, Leopard, Snow Leopard and Linux Kernel, will not be affected as these systems are already 4K aware. Hopefully, more can be done to make older operating systems more compatible with the advanced hard drive before sale begins.
Talking Point
Are you aware of the imminent hard disc format change? Can more be done to make people more aware of the situation?
 |
Greg Henderson 
Sarah Goodluck 
Chris Marentis 
Laura Goede 
David Ritchie 
Still playing catchup with SSD’s, huh? Well, I don’t think standard hard drives are going to die any time soon. It’s good they’re making things more efficient.
Biggest headache for hard drive retailers in the world… here comes the fun days
Looks like everybody having XP will have to move to Windows 7 soon. Those who avoided buying Vista also will be forced to upgrade.
No I was not aware of it but thanks for keeping me informed
Maureen recently posted..GPS Tracking Devices For Automobiles Review – Zoombak ZMBK346 Advanced GPS Universal Locator
I see they are even gonna release a 4 tb soon how exiting
Carla recently posted..Terabyte External Hard Drive Review – Western Digital WD Elements 1 TB
I have experienced this with 3 pc’s I have at home, I tried upgrading their RAM’s and Hard disks but as I went on to the project, because I have always used Windows XP and thought this OS absorbs less viruses than of what we have now… The swap was unsuccessful I had the shop replace the hard disks to lower cApacity.
I agree with Marques Shane’s comment. I guess it just means it’s time to upgrade now. It seems Windows Vista has always been better.
I don’t think this news has been widely spread out. I cannot say that I’m super up to date when it comes to changes in technology. But no, I haven’t heard about this one.