Even though the launch of Windows 7 has been a success with something like 90 million units sold there are still a whole bunch of folks out three who, for whatever reason, have stuck with XP. Now there’s nothing wrong with that after all once Service Pack 3 is install the venerable XP is a rock solid operating system. However the future must come to all of us at some point and such is the case with XP.
According to a news report from the BBC in early 2011 the hard drives we use in our machines will be undergoing one of the biggest changes in its format than has been seen in 30 some years.
Called advanced format this change will make it easier for hard drive manufacturers to produce bigger drives that use less energy.
There is only one problem: Windows XP.
The problem originates in the way that hard drives have been storing data for years, the 512k byte sector. While this was okay with smaller drives of the past the larger drives we use now end up with lots of empty space.
While 512 bytes was useful when hard drives were only a few megabytes in size, it makes less sense when drives can hold a terabyte (1000 gigabytes), or more of data.
“The technology has changed but that fundamental building block of formatting has not,” said David Burks, a product marketing manager for storage firm Seagate.
This fine resolution on hard drives is causing a problem, he said, because of the wasted space associated with each tiny block.
Each 512 byte sector has a marker showing where it begins and an area dedicated to storing error correction codes. In addition a tiny gap has to be left between each sector. In large drives this wasted space where data cannot be stored can take up a significant proportion of the drive.
Moving to an advanced format of 4K sectors means about eight times less wasted space but will allow drives to devote twice as much space per block to error correction.
“You can get yourself into a corner where you cannot squeeze much more onto the disk,” said Steve Perkins, a technical consultant for Western Digital.
This shift also allows manufacturers to make more efficient use of the real estate on a hard drive.
“We can put more data on the disk,” he said. “It’s about 7-11% more efficient as a format.”
Where this becomes a problem with Windows XP is that it was released before the 4k format was decided upon. While these new advanced format drives will be able to hep XP cope by pretending that they still use the 512k format there could be problems when writing data to the disk.
It might not be a killer problem but there will be a noticeable delay and reduction in hard drive performance.
Related posts:
