New hard drive standard will make XP obsolete

[mhelm1]

From Maximum PC:
http://www.maximumpc.com/article/news/new_hard_drives_may_force_xp_users_upgrade_7

In 2011 data will be written on 4k blocks instead of current 512 blocks.

What do you think? I never save anything smaller than 4K anyway. Will a third party come to the rescue?

 

[MRFS]

> Hard drive manufacturers know this,
> so they have built in emulation for the 512 byte block size.


Western Digital are already selling HDDs with this new 4K sector:
contact them for the very latest developments with their HDD products.


For example, see "Advanced Format Technology" on this WD Scorpio Blue:

http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.asp?driveid=815


Under "Interface" choose "SATA 3 Gb/s w/AdvFormat".

Why not buy one and measure the performance yourself?

MS is trying to spread fear about XP becoming obsolete:
however, 74% of business PCs still use XP.


In my opinion, what also needs to happen is an enhancement
to the SATA protocol, to upgrade to 4k "jumbo frames"
during transmission: this will eliminate almost all of
the 10/8 overhead on every byte (one start bit and
one stop bit for each 8-bit byte).

The 10/8 overhead is THE reason why SATA/3G = 300 MB/second,
and SATA/6G = 600 MB/second (just divide by 10).

When I proposed this to the SATA standards organization
in Beaverton, Oregon, they wanted me to pay them to review it.

My proposal made news at benchmarkreviews.com here:

http://benchmarkreviews.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=10291&Itemid=22


MRFS

 

[omnisome]

So, I'm confused. Am I okay if I don't get a 2011-HDD?