Technology Brief | March 2014 Advanced Format Technology Brief
Advanced Format Technology Brief / Table of Contents Table of Contents What is Advanced Format?...........................................................................................................1 How Does Advanced Format Technology Work?...............................................................1 How Does Advanced Format Technology Maintain Compatibility?....................... 1 512-byte Read....................................................................................................
Advanced Format / Technology Brief What is Advanced Format? Advanced Format is a new technology for increasing hard drive capacities while maintaining data integrity. In order to create higher capacity drives, manufacturers have begun the transition to Advanced Format. HGST is now introducing new, high capacity drives with Advanced Format.
Advanced Format / Technology Brief 512-byte Read When the host requests to read a single 512-byte logical block, the hard drive will actually read the entire 4K physical sector containing the requested 4K block containing the 512 bytes. The 512-byte is extracted and sent to the host. This can be done very quickly. For example (see Figure 3), a single read of Logical Block #3 will cause Physical Block #1 to be read, and Block #3 is extracted and sent quickly to the host.
Advanced Format / Technology Brief Most modern operating systems use a file system that allocates storage in 4K blocks or clusters.
Advanced Format / Technology Brief Legacy Operating Systems Operating System 4K file systems Microsoft Windows XP Microsoft Server 2003 Microsoft Windows Home Server V1 Yes Yes Yes Automatically aligns partitions during installation No No No Using a Partition Alignment Tool For best performance, it is recommended that the hard drive be partitioned correctly upon first use.
Advanced Format / Technology Brief HGST trademarks are intended and authorized for use only in countries and jurisdictions in which HGST has obtained the rights to use, market and advertise the brand. Contact HGST for additional information. HGST shall not be liable to third parties for unauthorized use of this document or unauthorized use of its trademarks.
