WD10EARS ?

bradc · Post by **bradc** » Sun Nov 15, 2009 1:41 pm

Now on the WD site http://www.westerndigital.com/en/produc ... riveid=763

It has 64mb cache which is new, but it looks as if it will still have 500gb platters.

TalkinHorse · Post by **TalkinHorse** » Sun Nov 15, 2009 3:14 pm

The WD10EADS has 333 megabyte platters, 3 of them. (Or at least they used to...have they changed to a 2-platter design?) If the WD10EARS has 500 megabyte platters, then it would have 2...which might make it weigh less or have lower power needs -- which don't seem to be the case. But the specs don't state the platter count. They indicate higher power at idle and noisier seeks for the WD10EARS...maybe it spins faster?

Here's the WD10EADS page:

http://www.westerndigital.com/en/produc ... riveid=559

RaptorX · Post by **RaptorX** » Mon Nov 16, 2009 1:16 am

I think they've disabled the head park "feature" in this new HDD. Hence the idle power is almost the same as read/write power. All of the other Caviar Green HDDs with that feature consume almost 50% of read/write power in idle.

I read on another forum that WD10EARS was supposed to be part of the Caviar Blue Series but WD changed it, probably because of the 5400rpm platter speed.

winguy · Post by **winguy** » Fri Dec 18, 2009 7:45 am

Hi,

Some information on EARS
http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdo ... i=3691&p=2

_MarcoM_ · Post by **_MarcoM_** » Fri Dec 18, 2009 12:05 pm

A thing is unclear for me, i'll try to explain, sorry for my not-so tecnical english.

I have a "normal" hard drive with win7 home installed. If i backup this drive with the integrated MS backup tools in an external disk, and then rebuild the backup in the new AFD, do i need the align method, or the backup tool is designed to take care of this issue?

STFU · Post by **STFU** » Sat Dec 19, 2009 9:01 am

Hi everyone.

This drive arrived yesterday to a store near me. Costs 78â‚¬, that's 4â‚¬ more than the WD10EADS.
I was planning on buying the WD15EARS, but that doesn't seem to arrive until next year sadly. (like almost all other hdd's that are out of stock atm)

According to WD's pages the "EARS" is 30 grams lighter so does this confirm it's 500gb platters? Or is it just thinner casing and therefore 6db noisier in seeking? Btw why is it so much noisier?

Anyway i'm really excited about that +10% storage possibility although i'm running XP, but was planning on using only one partition, so I just need to set the jumper to pins 7-8 and i'm good to go.

Right?

_MarcoM_ · Post by **_MarcoM_** » Sat Dec 19, 2009 12:26 pm

Hi STFU!

IMO you are right, you need the align tool just in case something goes wrong with performance.

The EARS with 64MB cache is a 500GB/platter.

monographix · Post by **monographix** » Fri Jan 22, 2010 12:50 am

I got this 1T EARS Green Caviar drive and using the utility as suggested on the sticker on it, as i itend to use it as multi partitioned under both XP and 7, reports that the drive is a Non Advanced Format drive .........

i restored some acronis backups on it after i partitioned it and everything seemed normal, Now trying to restore one last backup but despite it being smaller it takes forever to complete .... it would copy a single medium size or small size file for ages ....., i had to cancel restoring ......

- Is there a WD align tool by acronis too that i think i saw somewhere?

- are there other aligning and alignment check - report tools out there?

- why is the drive reported as Non Advanced Format drive ?

- is it properly pre-aligned from factory? or is it that its by factory on "512b emulation" mode ?

- other tools to properly align the drive (without affecting stored data and paritions) ?

- if the drive will be aligned and used as 4k sector drive, will it work normally with WinXP ?

right now this drive is too slow under XP x86. I write a CD faster that it takes for 600mb files to write on this drive. Writing 2g of files also takes ages when at the same i would had burn two DVDs with those files

Thanks

speedboxx · Post by **speedboxx** » Fri Jan 22, 2010 8:03 am

I doubt they disabled the constant head park/unpark feature as in the older EADS series. The idle and seek power consumption is equal in the drive's main spec page, but if you look into the datasheet of the drive, the power consumption at idle/seek is equal to the older EADS. Must just be a misprint.

allenlux · Post by **allenlux** » Sat Jan 23, 2010 10:13 am

I posted my first experience with one of these drives here:
viewtopic.php?p=494893#494893

Having got over the initial alignment operation - which took longer than I had expected - my impressions of the drive a week later are good. It's imperceptibly quiet in operation except for the seeks, and its performance seems way better than the Samsung 320GB drive it replaced, although that could be because the Samsung drive was actually failing when I replaced it.

By the way, as far as am aware there is no current Acronis or Paragon commercial software which can partition these drives correctly. The only option is the free WD utility (which is by Paragon).

grazzhoppa · Post by **grazzhoppa** » Mon Feb 01, 2010 4:03 pm

allenlux wrote: By the way, as far as am aware there is no current Acronis or Paragon commercial software which can partition these drives correctly. The only option is the free WD utility (which is by Paragon).

As of January 19, 2010, they have another utility that runs outside of Windows OS. It's made by Acronis and WD says it may run up to 3 times faster.

the speed up is probably due to accessing the drive without the overhead of the general purpose OS.

http://support.wdc.com/product/download ... 05&lang=en

I am going to partition my WD10EARS manually with linux's parted program. So there is at least one utility than can partition it with the correct offsets; it's just not user friendly or automated.

edit: Here is my WD10EARS. 2 platters of ~500GB each; 64MB cache; 5400RPM; AAM is set to factory default.

Environment:

Fresh install of Windows 7 Professional 64bit. Patched to Feb 5, 2010.
- The OS is installed at the beginning of the WD10EARS drive
Default background services running (like the file indexer).
Pagefile located on a drive other than the WD10EARS.
SATA drives running in "IDE" mode - not with AHCI.
HDTune's "-1.0% CPU Usage" is some bug with HDTune and Win7.

The WD10EARS is screwed into the computer cases's HDD cage.
The Samsung HM250JI is suspended in an HDD cage with taught elastic.
- these 2 drives have direct airflow moving over them via a slow fan.
The WD5000AAKS is suspended in a 5.25" bay with taught elastic.
- this is near the top of the case, and there is no direct airflow cooling it. Hence, its reported temperature is a bit higher than the other drives.

For comparison; tested in the same environment:
500GB WD5000AAKS (manufactured before this model was marketed as a "Caviar Blue drive"). 2 platters of ~250GB each; 16MB cache; 7200RPM; AAM set to maximum "quiet mode".

For comparison; tested in the same environment as the above 2 drives.
250GB Samsung HM250JI; 2.5" SATA drive; unknown # of platters; 8MB Cache; 5400RPM; AAM is set to factory default.

The WD10EARS screwed into the HDD cages of the computer case is quieter in both idle and with random seeks than the older WD5000AAKS suspended with elastic! Alas, it is not silent, yet it is a significant improvement over that WD5000AAKS.

The above 2.5" notebook drive is relative-to-ambient silent; and the WD10EARS is slightly louder than ambient noise. Sequentially reading/writing, the seeks are imperceptible. Only during random seeks does it start to chatter with a muffled voice.

My qualitative conclusion regarding the sound of these 3 drives. No surprises here:

QUIETER: old 2.5" HM250JI 5400RPM <> new 3.5" WD10EARS 5400RPM <> old 3.5" WD5000AAKS 7200RPM :LOUDER

But the performance is not as simple:

FASTER: new 3.5" WD10EARS 5400RPM <> old 3.5" WD5000AAKS 7200RPM <> old 2.5" HM250JI 5400RPM :SLOWER

It's a good compromise drive. It provides decent performance at low, but not the lowest-available-today, offending noise levels. It's at the sweet spot for price-per-gigabyte too. I got it for US$70 after some coupon.

PS: I had no issues whatsoever with aligning the partitions properly.

Windows Vista's and 7's partition tools will align the beginning of all your partitions correctly automatically.

Linux users: the parted program and other programs that use the parted library, like gparted, are as ignorant about 4K aligned drives as Windows XP. You must break out the calculator and make sure your partitions start at sector numbers that are divisible by 8 (because there are eight 512byte virtual sectors inside a 4096byte physical sector)
- Or just follow Western Digital's directions for using the drive with Windows XP: partition it, then run the WD Align tool. That's because both parted and Windows XP's partition tools start the first partition at sector 63 by default (virtual-sector 63 is not aligned to the beginning of a 4K physical-sector).

sh0ckwAv3 · Post by **sh0ckwAv3** » Sat Feb 06, 2010 9:55 pm

Are third party defraggers such as Perfectdisk or Diskeeper compatible with advanced format disks?

canadian · Post by **canadian** » Sun Feb 07, 2010 10:47 am

What if you want to use this drive with more than one operating system? For e.g., you want it partitioned for stoage for XP filess, Windows 7 files and Linux files?

If you format it NTFS, I guess Linux could read it. But, if it's NTFS, can you just write files from XP or Windows 7 to it? Or do you have to format it with the WD tools if you decide to write anything from XP to it?

What if you use Parted/GParted to format the drive as NTFS, what that mean anything different?

Sounds like a major hassle using this drive but if they are all going the 4K route, maybe it doesn't matter since any newer drives will require such consideration?

grazzhoppa · Post by **grazzhoppa** » Sun Feb 07, 2010 12:17 pm

canadian wrote:What if you want to use this drive with more than one operating system? For e.g., you want it partitioned for stoage for XP filess, Windows 7 files and Linux files?

If you format it NTFS, I guess Linux could read it. But, if it's NTFS, can you just write files from XP or Windows 7 to it? Or do you have to format it with the WD tools if you decide to write anything from XP to it?

What if you use Parted/GParted to format the drive as NTFS, what that mean anything different?

Sounds like a major hassle using this drive but if they are all going the 4K route, maybe it doesn't matter since any newer drives will require such consideration?

Coincidentally, I wrote an answer to your question on another forum yesterday. Here it is:

There is a confusion and misuse of terminology which is in turn confusing you. You don't have to "format" this drive any differently than any other harddrive ever made. You do have to "partition" it differently than drives in the past.

The "special software" Western Digital gives out does not "format" your drive - it checks for correct partition alignment, and will re-align existing partitions if they are not aligned to this drive's new, larger sector size.

Once a partition is aligned properly they never have to be aligned ever again...unless you resize the partitions [or] destroy them and make new ones. It doesn't matter the operating system you're using after the partitions have been created.

For your specific case, the most simple method of paritioning this drive is to use Windows 7 to create the partition(s) on this drive. Windows 7 will automatically correctly align the partition(s) at the same time it creates them.

The only thing that matters is what partitioning software you use to create the partitions. (and cluster size)
Again, once the partitions have been created and correctly aligned, it won't matter what OS is being used to access the drive.

Windows 7's and Vista's partition tools will correctly align the partitions it creates

Windows XP's partition tool will misalign the partitions it creates. In this case, you should run the WD alignment tool once; then you're set for the life of the partition.

Linux's gparted partitioning tool will also, by default, misalign the partitions it creates (the version of gparted as of the time of this posting/Feb. 2010).
- You can either run WD's alignment tool after creating the partitions, or you can actually explicitly set the beginning sector of each partition to be a multiple of 8 and avoid running the WD tool. (why 8? because every eighth 512byte virtual-sector will start at the beginning of a 4096byte physical-sector).
And you could use Linux's parted command line program to explicitly set the beginning and ending sector #'s of the partitions.

And lets say you still manage to use an old partitioning software program and create misaligned partitions - you won't be losing any data. The only consequence of misaligned partitions on this drive is very slow performance when writing data to those partitions. Your data will be safe and secure on misaligned partitions; it will be just be very slow to modify that data.

-----------

Are third party defraggers such as Perfectdisk or Diskeeper compatible with advanced format disks?

If the file system is using a cluster size that is a multiple of 4096bytes, [and] the partitions are correctly aligned to this drive's physical sectors, it won't matter what defragger, running within the OS, you use.

In this situation, every file that is created and even moved around on the drive will always be aligned to the physical sectors.

Windows, by default, will make its NTFS filesystems on this drive with 4096byte clusters. I don't know the default cluster size regarding Linux and ext2/ext3/ext4.

canadian · Post by **canadian** » Sun Feb 07, 2010 2:17 pm

Hmmm... interesting. Thanks for the info.

What if I can't use Windows 7 (yet)? I plan on having it at some point but not yet.

My options for operating systems are Linux (ext3) and XP.

I need a storage drive but I don't need an OS on it. Linux and XP just have to be able to read it. I have two storage drives currently and they are formatted with ext3 and one isn't full yet so I can get more linux-based files on it. So, no problem there. I was planning on having the future drive formatted with NTFS and then Linux could read it and I could store generic files or Windows programs/apps/files as well. For e.g., images (.iso) and maybe some programs (.exe), video files (.avi etc.), too.

So, is this drive still an option or good candidate for this use?

If so, it sounds like I would need the WD advanced format utility and then re-align the partitions after it's formated NTFS (which I could do with Parted, right?)?

I always use ntfs-3g in Linux and haven't had a problem yet reading Windows partitions so that was the plan.

I was considering the WD drive since it's supposed to be quiet and low heat but also because it's a decent price in my area and available locally. The new format is a concern, though, and I am not sure whether they use the same Intellipark feature or not. Anyway, thanks for more info.

grazzhoppa · Post by **grazzhoppa** » Sun Feb 07, 2010 3:19 pm

canadian wrote:So, is this drive still an option or good candidate for this use?

If so, it sounds like I would need the WD advanced format utility and then re-align the partitions after it's formated NTFS (which I could do with Parted, right?)?

Yea that's right:

first partition & format it with Parted just like you'd do with any drive (if you're also formatting a partition, choose a cluster size that is a multiple of 4096bytes if you're explicitly setting the cluster size).

Then boot this version of WD's partition-alignment tool: http://support.wdc.com/product/downloadsw.asp?sid=122 . WD doesn't provide a tool that can run in Linux.. so you have use that bootable image to do it. They do have a tool that can run in Windows here

Once the partitions have been aligned, you don't have to worry about the new sector format ever again.... until you create more partitions with partition-tools that aren't aware of the larger sector sizes.

sh0ckwAv3 · Post by **sh0ckwAv3** » Sun Feb 07, 2010 4:54 pm

I tried to create partitions using Acronis Disk Director but HDTune benchmark was horrible, around 2.4 - 6 MB/s. Had to repartition with Windows 7 Disk Management. Initially media playback stutters but once the files settle in the lags began to disappear.

ISO's sized around 8gb took about 8-10 minutes to extract from dvds. Using 640gb caviar blue as my main drive. I think wd10ears is amazing for a storage drive.

canadian · Post by **canadian** » Sun Feb 07, 2010 5:08 pm

grazzhoppa wrote: Yea that's right:
first partition & format it with Parted just like you'd do with any drive (if you're also formatting a partition, choose a cluster size that is a multiple of 4096bytes if you're explicitly setting the cluster size).

Then boot this version of WD's partition-alignment tool: http://support.wdc.com/product/downloadsw.asp?sid=122 . WD doesn't provide a tool that can run in Linux.. so you have use that bootable image to do it. They do have a tool that can run in Windows here
Once the partitions have been aligned, you don't have to worry about the new sector format ever again.... until you create more partitions with partition-tools that aren't aware of the larger sector sizes.

GParted doesn't format NTFS with a cluster size of 4096 bytes? I think CLI with parted, you can use the command mkntfs -c and then set it but set it to what?

Okay, I might be wrong on that but I think it is one option to use gparted and create an NTFS partition that way. Although, maybe formating with either XP, Vista or Windows 7 might be preferable? For me, right now, I have to use XP so then would I first 1) format the storage drive with NTFS and then use that WD tool with the .iso (image)?

Oh, I guess you are saying to do that here, right?:

Then boot this version of WD's partition-alignment tool: http://support.wdc.com/product/downloadsw.asp?sid=122 . WD doesn't provide a tool that can run in Linux.. so you have use that bootable image to do it. They do have a tool that can run in Windows here

I wouldn't install an OS on it, it's just for storage. So, is one of the two methods above what I should use? Just curious.

canadian · Post by **canadian** » Sun Feb 07, 2010 5:15 pm

http://man.linux-ntfs.org/mkntfs.8.html
This seems to imply using the basic command will result in the 4096 bytes cluster size unless I understand these things incorrectly.

Would running that command in parted (using a Live CD that has parted, say) result in aligning the partition? Would it set up the sector format as you'd want it? I just thought if so, it gives another option other than Windows 7 and the WD Align tool. But, no one has mentioned it nor have I found any discussions of it using a Google search so maybe I still misunderstand.

warmonked · Post by **warmonked** » Wed Mar 03, 2010 2:28 pm

thanks for the performance test Grazz. Those are the only test results I've seen for a WD EARS drive, despite the fact that they've been out for a couple of months. I'm surprised they perform so well given the lower rpm.

enobm · Post by **enobm** » Thu Mar 18, 2010 3:57 pm

TalkinHorse wrote:The WD10EADS has 333 megabyte platters, 3 of them. (Or at least they used to...have they changed to a 2-platter design?) If the WD10EARS has 500 megabyte platters

dunno who's crazy here. Just to clear out for other people like me that dont thoroughly align with all BS series that some manufacturers meticulously release.

WDxxEACS was first green series that had 1.0TB disc in their herd and only 16MB cache and was based on 333MB/platter
then we had two 1TB versions based on 500MB/platter named WDxxEADS (500-2.0TB)
and now we have 4KB sector c-rap series named WDxxEARS which is just same platter density as 2009 WDxxEADS series and with bigger buffer 64MB (obviously need for 4kB chunks) and different firmware.

from thorough review "http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/storage/print/1tb-14hdd-roundup.html"

And for pete's sake why do you all care about buffer? I used to have much better discs based on 2MB buffers than todays hdd with 32MB/64MB. Bigger buffer means NOT-A-THING in disc performance if they crap us with firmware. It's volatile memory, nothing special there. Usually still 6.0ns SDRAM (PC133 if anyone still remembers) So some of todays 7200rpm drives have 3MB/s copying speed on short stroked 40GB partition on begining of drive and same 3MB/s when skipped first 500GB and then make same partition. This has nothing with 4kB sectors or WD (for now) but still it's patheti to see that 5yrs younger drives underperform in comparison with some 120GB/2MB ata drive.

nikunj_cal · Post by **nikunj_cal** » Tue May 18, 2010 10:58 pm

Hi All

Registered just to post in this thread .

@grazzhoppa - Please help me out here. I am thinking of buying a WD20EARS for myself. I plan to use the WD20EARS with a USB/SATA HDD Dock and as an external storage drive for music and movies. I also plan to plug in the USB Dock to my WD TV to playback these movies. Now I have two computers one running Windows 7(Laptop) and the other running XP(Desktop). To correct the alignment problem I intend to align and format the drive using Windows 7 (Laptop connected to WD20 ears via USB HDD Dock). Once aligned I plan to access(read + write data) to the drive mainly through my Desktop running Windows Xp. Will this be a problem ?? Will XP have problems in reading and writing Data to the drive ?

Note : Only read and writing of files will be done thru xp. I can always use my Win7 to create new partitions if required.

grazzhoppa · Post by **grazzhoppa** » Wed May 19, 2010 12:15 am

nikunj_cal wrote:Please help me out here. To correct the alignment problem I intend to align and format the drive using Windows 7 (Laptop connected to WD20 ears via USB HDD Dock).

Your method looks fine.
Since you're going to be using Windows 7, all you need to do is use Windows 7's built-in disk management software to create the partitions.

Access the "Disk Management" software via typing compmgmt.msc into the Run prompt. Or right click Computer and select the Manage option (can do this in Explorer or on the start menu).

To clarify: You can format the partitions in any OS. It's only the creation of the partition that requires unorthodox alignment.

Once aligned I plan to access(read + write data) to the drive mainly through my Desktop running Windows Xp. Will this be a problem ?? Will XP have problems in reading and writing Data to the drive ?

You'll have zero problems doing that.

nikunj_cal · Post by **nikunj_cal** » Wed May 19, 2010 1:01 am

grazzhoppa wrote:
nikunj_cal wrote:Please help me out here. To correct the alignment problem I intend to align and format the drive using Windows 7 (Laptop connected to WD20 ears via USB HDD Dock).
Your method looks fine.
Since you're going to be using Windows 7, all you need to do is use Windows 7's built-in disk management software to create the partitions.

You'll have zero problems doing that.[/quote]

Thanks a lot for your help. Really want to go for the EARS as the manufacturers claim the new 4k technology to be more robust with lesser errors hopefully. Also will this work with the WD TV HD Media player. The Media Player will simply read music and movie files from the HDD . It writes only a small folder on the HDD in which it stores the indexing .content of the drive.

whiic · Post by **whiic** » Wed May 19, 2010 2:21 am

enobm wrote:Just to clear out for other people like me that dont thoroughly align with all BS series that some manufacturers meticulously release.

WDxxEACS was first green series that had 1.0TB disc in their herd and only 16MB cache and was based on 333MB/platter
then we had two 1TB versions based on 500MB/platter named WDxxEADS (500-2.0TB)
and now we have 4KB sector c-rap series named WDxxEARS which is just same platter density as 2009 WDxxEADS series and with bigger buffer 64MB (obviously need for 4kB chunks) and different firmware.

That's also BS because the first green series ("Greenpower", same as current "Caviar Green") had 250GB/platter. 333GB was 2nd generation, and that was also available as EADS (32MB cache). 3rd generation is 500GB/platter, EACS, EADS and EARS... though EARS could be considered a separate 4th generation because despite having same 500GB platters, it's quite different from the others (not just the cache).

If you don't believe me, check the table you IMG-tagged here: 00ZJB0 has 4 platters for 1TB. Then do the math... no 333 GB/platter.

nikunj_cal wrote:Really want to go for the EARS as the manufacturers claim the new 4k technology to be more robust with lesser errors hopefully. Also will this work with the WD TV HD Media player.

Increased data integrity OR smaller amount of error-correction code that wastes space on the HDD... or some solution that gives small advantage for both.

I don't think data integrity and silent data corruption is a major issue as ECC has become quite strong already. There's not much chance for silent data corruption. Maybe longer sectors gives advantage on error correction more than for error detection... if so, it could recover bad sectors more easily... but it's still likely the HDD will die out of other reasons. Anyway, current ECC for 512 bytes sectors is already strong enough. I doubt 4096 byte is much better - it's just that the wasted space for ECC for 512 byte sectors is much much bigger.

Won't best HDDs for WDTV be a laptop HDD, like WD Passport? WDTV has powered USB ports so it's possible to run both WDTV and the HDD from same power brick. WD Passport also looks pretty hawt placed on top of WDTV.

nikunj_cal · Post by **nikunj_cal** » Wed May 19, 2010 2:50 am

whiic wrote:
enobm wrote:Just to clear out for other people like me that dont thoroughly align with all BS series that some manufacturers meticulously release.
..................................................

Won't best HDDs for WDTV be a laptop HDD, like WD Passport? WDTV has powered USB ports so it's possible to run both WDTV and the HDD from same power brick. WD Passport also looks pretty hawt placed on top of WDTV.

WD Passport Drives are relatively more expensive as compared to 3.5" external drives. That's the only reason why I want to go for External 3.5" Drives . I have a 2.5" drive which I use for portability. Nowadays with HD media taking an average space of 4- 8 GB per movie , it becomes a bit expensive to go for the passport drives. Yes WD TV has powered usb ports and I often use a non powered hub to connect multiple drives but the scanning time increases.

You are right about the error correction though . However just a thought here., with so many reports of hdd failing after 3 to 4 mths of use pouring in , will these newer EARS drives address that problem or were these failiures for an entirely diff reason altogether ?

whiic · Post by **whiic** » Wed May 19, 2010 3:58 pm

You are right about the error correction though . However just a thought here., with so many reports of hdd failing after 3 to 4 mths of use pouring in , will these newer EARS drives address that problem or were these failiures for an entirely diff reason altogether ?

When a HDD fails, it usually fails clearly:
- does not spin up (electronics board failure)
- spins up but doesn't recognize (head failure, electronics failure, firmware corruption)
- HDD accumulated ridiculous number of bad sectors (systematic media deterioration).

I don't think improved ECC would fix any of these. The only failure it could affect would be media deterioration but should the deterioration be severe, there's a limit to what ECC can do. It could give extra few days/weeks for the HDDs life.

It will also reduce likelyhood for a few bad sectors to form over the life of the HDD. Note: few bad sectors doesn't mean a dead drive.

Also, as ECC has not only error detection by error correction, it can also recover data from a bad sector more likely, meaning that reallocation could possibly be done without data-loss (i.e bad sectors don't necessarily have to be zero-filled to force reallocation).

I wouldn't consider 4K sectors a must-have feature at the moment, especially if you don't even get the benefit of added capacity. It's not something I'd avoid either.

subaqua · Post by **subaqua** » Mon May 24, 2010 3:38 am

nikunj_cal wrote: Also will this work with the WD TV HD Media player. The Media Player will simply read music and movie files from the HDD . It writes only a small folder on the HDD in which it stores the indexing .content of the drive

I'll also like to know if this is ok. I have windows 7 that ill use to format and write all the data too. Im just going to be using my WDTV live to read off.

So is it ok if i just let windows 7 format it normaly or will my media drive require me to do that Align thing?

whiic · Post by **whiic** » Mon May 24, 2010 5:39 am

@subaqua

Windows 7 does properly aligned partitions so you don't need to re-align it with any tool. Only drives partitioned from within Win XP and older need re-alignment.

You can use WDTV to read stuff from 4K sector drive as the physical 4K sectors are split into 512 byte logical sectors. Your hardware will continue to request data in small 512 byte chunks. 4K was chosen because OS typically reads 4K (or more) at a time, causing sequential 512 byte reads on hardware level.

Should you for what ever reason want to read 512 bytes of the disk, 4K physical sectors is no problem: HDD just has to read a 4K sector and return the contents only partially to the host system. Since the HDD will most likely be formatted with 4K (or bigger) clusters, the OS could even request smaller than 4K at a time (so it just has to ignore the unnecessary bytes). The alignment is a problem only when requested 4K chunk doesn't align with 4K sector, for example LBA 6921783 through 6921787 are all on the same 4K sector since they're "8 divisible" (the number themselves aren't, but do acknowledge LBA 0 exists!) If you were to request a 4K long read on a misaligned partition, starting for example from LBA 6921782 and ending to 6921786, then you have to read two physical sectors (4K+4K) from 6921775 to 6921783 and from 6921783 to 6921787.

If WDTV can read a Win 7 partitioned drive using 512 byte sectors, it can definitely read a Win 7 partitioned drive using 4K sectors.

If WDTV can read a WinXP partitioned drive using 512 byte sectors (and it definitely can), it can also read a WinXP partitioned 4K sector drive. The ONLY downside is that misalignement will cause slowdown of operation, nothing more, forcing the HDD to read two sectors every time one sector is requested. And even worse, having to read two sectors and write two sectors if only one write operation is performed.

So,
WinXP = works otherwise flawlessly but slow
WinXP + align = works flawlessly and fast
Win7 = works flawlessly and fast
Win7 + align = no change (already aligned)

subaqua · Post by **subaqua** » Mon May 24, 2010 6:31 am

ok thanks for that whiic.

I guess i just want to be sure coz you hear so much mixed stuff about these new drives. The guy at a computer store told me it would be best not to get one of these new drives as i might have issues with them on the media drive.

But after reading your post i think im happy now to go out and buy one when i need more storage.