Analysis: The Impact Of Shifting From 512 Byte To 4 KB Sectors

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Slowly but surely, hard drives with 4 KB sectors are replacing the "legacy" 512 byte sector size. By January 2011, all drive vendors will have made this transition. Buyers of new PCs are safe, but there are still a few performance pitfalls to note.

Test Setup And Transfer Diagrams

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System Hardware
HardwareDetails
CPUIntel Core i7-920 (45 nm, 2.66 GHz, 8MB Shared L3 Cache)
Motherboard (LGA 1366)Supermicro X8SAX Revision: 1.0, Chipset: Intel X58 + ICH10R, BIOS: 1.0B
RAM2 GB DDR3-1333 Corsair CM3X1024-1333C9DHX
HDDSeagate NL35 400 GB, ST3400832NS, 7200 RPM, SATA 3Gb/s, 8 MB Cache
Power SupplyOCZ EliteXstream 800 W, OCZ800EXS-EU
Benchmarks
Performance Measurementsh2benchw 3.12 PCMark Vantage 1.0
I/O PerformanceIOMeter 2006.07.27 Fileserver-Benchmark, Webserver-Benchmark, Database-Benchmark, Workstation-Benchmark, Streaming Reads, Streaming Writes
System Software & Drivers
DriverDetails
Operating SystemWindows Vista Ultimate SP1
Intel Chipset9.1.0.1007
AMD GraphicsRadeon 8.12
Intel Matrix Storage8.7.0.1007