Hardware The Facts: 4K Advanced Format Hard Disks

Afaik Modern OS' don't access disks by sector numbers, only the legacy OS' like XP do. By the time 16TB disks arrive, XP won't be around anyway.

 

Funny how no one is actually complaining...What a wonderful imagination you have!

Well in the real world, no one keeps buying new hardware as soon as they come out. Only enthusiasts do that. (Hardware makers know this; that's why their marketing depts have established the premium priced market under the "Enthusiasts" banner...As this particular group are willing pay premiums for "new toys" that will be cheap as chips for everyone else in 5 to 6 years time. More matured/refined as well!)

As SinxarKnights said, regular Jane/Joe users invest in computers for the long haul. They use them until they break or they really need to replace them (as it no longer does the job adequately).

Businesses go even further and refuse to update unless there is a real need to. Usually, they will not update as the in-house developed software they use is tied to version specific software, and the original coder has gone onto other things. (In extreme cases, large companies source spare parts for older hardware to keep their machines going until its no longer economically viable to keep running their old systems.)

And despite some enthusiasts out there asking: Who uses XP anymore?
The answer? The other 52% of the web population. That's at least 901,676,746 people on the planet who are connected online with Windows XP. (Approx 25% of the world's population is online. => 1,733,993,741)



As for the article?
I thank the author for writing it up. At least we can understand the issue and how it affects those OSs that don't support this new arrangement. (I'm glad someone has put up benchmark comparisons.)

So really, its not a major issue as the HDD maker (Western Digital in this case), has provided a workaround.

 

You're welcome Aussie

 

Bit curious, first a long story in which it is stated several times that it currently has no influence, then a test showing it has a significant influence, perhaps the author should revisit the first part and correct that.

 

Advanced Format Drive Fix for Windows XP (Solution, workaround).
After reading a lot of crap about Advanced Format drives having problems with Windows XP and other old OSes, I decided to post this easy fix. So if you want to use the Advanced Format Drive with other OSes than Vista or 7 do this one easy thing after you purchase the drive.
Create all the partitions on the disk using Acronis Disk Director 11 (or later). Remember to tell Acronis Disk Director that you'll be using the drive for Windows 7, even though you'll use it for XP or other OS. Do not use any obsolete partitioning tools like Acronis Disk Director 10 or Windows XP disk management! The old partitioning tools will create the partitions misaligned!
That's all you have to do!
You can do a test and see if you have done everything right by running this utility: Dell Utility Advanced Format HDD Detection Tool. Just Google it.
You'll see whether your partitions are Aligned or Misaligned.
If you delete a partition using Windows XP and recreate it using Windows XP it will be misaligned again.
So use Acronis Disk Director 11 to recreate it and everything will be fine again.