4K sector drives

[Chewy509]

Hi Guys,

Having a lot of trouble getting through a lot of BS marketing material regarding 4Kn HDDs.

From what I've found all internal HDDs use 512e logical formatting, despite being 4K physical sectors. (which is a PITA). However there have been mention that some external HDDs actually do present themselves as 4K sectors in both logical and physical settings. (aka they are 4Kn drives and the OS sees the smallest allocation unit - the sector as 4K in size).

But the problem is, I can't find out which drives do and do not present them selves as 4K sectors without the 512byte emulation? Rumor has it the Seagate 2TB+ GoFlex do, but all Seagate support say is that they are AF drives but can't tell me if they present themselves as 4K sectors to the OS. (WTF - they can't tell what their product presents itself as to the OS!)

It would be greatly appreciated if someone can confirm which model of HDDs present themselves as 4Kn to the OS, and confirm that they do not use any form of 512 byte emulation.

So, why am I asking this? I actually need a few 4Kn sector drives for work - (product testing) - but every time someone tells us it's a 4Kn drive, it's really a 512e drive! :frusty: :frusty:

Chewy

 

[sdbardwick]

Maybe try to get a dev. kit from IDEMA? At least they explicitly mention 4kn drives.

 

[ddrueding]

I have a number of 3-4TB drives kicking around that I could test, just walk me though how to find out.

 

[Stereodude]

I'm pretty sure only USB drives over 2.2TiB are 4k sector drives due to limitations of the USB interface. I have 2 3TB Seagate USB 3.0 Backup+ drives that have 4k sectors (or at least present themselves to the OS as having 4k sectors).

 

[Chewy509]

I have a number of 3-4TB drives kicking around that I could test, just walk me though how to find out.

In linux, use "hdparm -I <device>" to get the exact details.

It'll list a whole stack of stuff, but the important section is:

CHS current addressable sectors: 16514064
LBA user addressable sectors: 195371568
LBA48 user addressable sectors: 195371568
Logical Sector size: 512 bytes
Physical Sector size: 512 bytes
Logical Sector-0 offset: 0 bytes
device size with M = 1024*1024: 95396 MBytes
device size with M = 1000*1000: 100030 MBytes (100 GB)
cache/buffer size = unknown

Both logical and physical should be 4096, and a quick "LBA count * logical size = device size" as a double check.

 

[Chewy509]

I have 2 3TB Seagate USB 3.0 Backup+ drives that have 4k sectors (or at least present themselves to the OS as having 4k sectors).

Thanks.

 

[Stereodude]

I have a number of 3-4TB drives kicking around that I could test, just walk me though how to find out.

Use NTFSInfo.

 

[Stereodude]

Thanks.

Here's what NTFSInfo reports for one of the Seagate drives:

NTFS Information Dump V1.01
Copyright (C) 1997 Mark Russinovich
http://www.sysinternals.com

Volume Size
-----------
Volume size            : 2861586 MB
Total sectors          : 732566271
Total clusters         : 732566271
Free clusters          : 732519664
Free space             : 2861404 MB (99% of drive)

Allocation Size
----------------
Bytes per sector       : 4096
Bytes per cluster      : 4096
Bytes per MFT record   : 4096
Clusters per MFT record: 1

MFT Information
---------------
MFT size               : 9 MB (0% of drive)
MFT start cluster      : 4
MFT zone clusters      : 2304 - 53536
MFT zone size          : 200 MB (0% of drive)
MFT mirror start       : 366283135

Meta-Data files
---------------

 

[ddrueding]

Use NTFSInfo.

Thanks. I'll try them when I get to work tomorrow.