# XP will have issues with modern HDD's?



## Mussels (Apr 12, 2010)

http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/ne...-disks-might-not-be-much-fun-for-xp-users.ars


Interestingly, they mention (on page 2) the following:



> And so it was that last September (and it's this that makes it a little surprising that the BBC and other outlets are talking about the issue now, but it's one that certainly deserves the publicity), Western Digital announced its "Advanced Format" drives. Advanced Format drives use the 4096-byte sectors, 100-byte error codes, and a 40-byte gap as described above. However, to maintain compatibility with Windows XP, they pretend to use 512-byte sectors. As can be seen from the spec sheet (the drives with 64 MiB cache, model numbers ending in AARS or EARS) all use 4096 byte sectors internally) the sector counts even for the 2 TB drives are high; the 2 TB disk having just shy of 4 billion sectors.
> 
> This kind of deceit is a problem if software tries to write less than 4096 bytes at a time. To write 512 bytes out of 4096, the drive must read all 4096, update the 512 written bytes, and then write back all 4096 bytes (a process known as read-modify-write, RMW). That means more seeking and more disk activity, which is clearly going to perform worse than a 512 byte write on an old drive with true 512 byte sectors.




This could explain why some users complain about WD EARS drives not performing right in XP (at least in synthetic benchmarks)




> The biggest problem is when the 4096 byte write straddles two sectors. When that happens, the situation is even worse as two RMW cycles are needed, one for each partially-written sector. However, as long as the partition starts on sector boundary, "almost all" subsequent writes will—due to the OS's widespread use of 4096 byte writes—line up properly, so they won't straddle multiple sectors and won't need read-modify-writes.
> 
> And as luck would have it, the most widely used operating system in the world will always create partitions that don't line up nicely. Single partition Windows XP systems will always make the first partition start on the 63rd 512 byte sector. If it was just one sector further on, then everything would line up nicely on these pseudo-512 byte sector drives. But as it is, Windows XP partitions on such a disk will have to suffer two RMW operations for almost every single write made to the disk. This is mitigated somewhat by many operations being multiples of 4096 bytes, so it's only at the start and end of each operation that the read-modify-write is needed, but nonetheless the overhead is substantial.
> 
> The other big problem is disk cloning software. Just as with Windows XP, many disk cloning tools will write out partitions so that they don't neatly line up with the 4096 byte sectors. These programs need to be updated so that the partitions they create will be properly aligned, and so that when migrating from a 512 byte to a 4096 byte disk, they slightly reposition the partitions to ensure proper alignment.




and something i find VERY interesting:



> To that end, Western Digital has produced software to re-align partitions so that they all start on 4096 byte boundaries, thereby eliminating most of the RMW operations, except for the relatively infrequent smaller reads and writes. Split operations will still incur a sizeable penalty—10% slower, with an extra 5 ms latency—but shouldn't be so frequent as to cause a major problem. Any system using Windows XP or created with disk cloning/system imaging software will need to run this software to achieve satisfactory performance.



5ms latency addon? gah! wheres this software, for those poor poor XP users!


----------



## hat (Apr 12, 2010)

Looks like a new OS should be moving up the upgrade priority list, heh


----------



## Mussels (Apr 12, 2010)

hat said:


> Looks like a new OS should be moving up the upgrade priority list, heh



no 64 bit, no DX10/11, worse security, no TRIM support for SSD's, no support for these new HDD's... XP is looking worse and worse


----------



## hat (Apr 12, 2010)

XP is a great OS for older systems, but if someone's going to be using DX10/11 hardware and SSDs, they should have vista or 7, heh


----------



## Mussels (Apr 12, 2010)

hat said:


> XP is a great OS for older systems, but if someone's going to be using DX10/11 hardware and SSDs, they should have vista or 7, heh



it seems that upcoming mechanical drives will have issues as well - all WD drives with 64MB cache for example.


----------



## Error 404 (Apr 12, 2010)

I could swear I've seen this news a few months back, just not sure where.


----------



## 95Viper (Apr 12, 2010)

Mussels said:


> 5ms latency addon? gah! wheres this software, for those poor poor XP users!



Windows 32 bit OS: WD Align System Utility - Powered by Paragon

Windows 64 bit OS: WD Align System Utility - Powered by Paragon


Edit:

Downloads
Advanced Format Software

WD Align CD - Powered by Acronis


Edit 2: @Mussels>  They are not going to totally shut them (xp users) out yet, there is still a dollar or two to be made; they are slowly weeing them off of it.


----------



## jagd (Apr 12, 2010)

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/storage/display/1tb-hdd-roundup-3_4.html  ,i had same feeling . 


Error 404 said:


> I could swear I've seen this news a few months back, just not sure where.


----------



## theJesus (Apr 13, 2010)

Gah, more reason to get off my ass and install 7 . . . and hundreds of apps and drivers  . . . I'd kill for the ability to actually "upgrade" the OS without having to re-install anything.  Too bad that will never completely work.


----------



## blkhogan (Apr 13, 2010)

But I love my XP pro  I guess its time to fully let go. My crunchers can stay on XP no big hit there, I can get my fix on them.


----------



## robn (Apr 13, 2010)

Well I guess this is not a problem ...not much point buying modern components for something 8.5 years old! No other part of anyone's PC is that old; £300 graphics cards come and go every 18 months! Besides Win7-64 Premium was (pre-order) from Amazon for £45, and a Linux upgrade is free (though a bumpy ride from my experience).

Hey, my XP box had IDE drives anyway (not to mention 512MB RAM, 56k modem, ball mouse, 1024x768 15" screen, floppy drive, SBlive, AGP graphics... for £899 in '03)


----------



## Melvis (Apr 30, 2010)

SO as long as you don't buy the 2TB HDD you be fine with XP?


----------



## dr emulator (madmax) (Apr 30, 2010)

*i remember a problem with xp and sata drives*

so i install xp on this old pc of mine, all the drivers (using a samsung 16mb cache 320gb sata as the boot drive) and then fired up my wintv nova-t (digital tv card) and it suffered from lag  
so i just stuck with my parallel ata drive (which are by the way getting harder to come by ) 
i use the sata drives as back up drives
sometimes though they aren't always seen by xp or the bios :shadedshu and i have to switch my pc of at the wall and then back on for them to be seen


----------



## theJesus (Apr 30, 2010)

Biggest issue I've had and I don't know what causes it, but XP would never recognize my 2x 1.5tb drives in RAID-0 or JBOD.  Some apps on a PE boot disc were able to.  However, not using the on-board storage controller for RAID and instead making a dynamic disk with striping works just fine.  But then most apps on the PE boot disc were unable to access it properly.


----------



## Frick (Apr 30, 2010)

Saw this awhile ago. As others say, time to move on. Nice that there's software to do a bit of cheating for the XP users.


----------



## Mussels (Apr 30, 2010)

Melvis said:


> SO as long as you don't buy the 2TB HDD you be fine with XP?



all WD drives with 64MB cache have this problem.


----------



## Melvis (Apr 30, 2010)

Mussels said:


> all WD drives with 64MB cache have this problem.



O well glad its only 8 (6 if you go 3gb/s) Drives out of all of them, and only 3 in the high performance (black), not that bad.


----------



## Frick (Apr 30, 2010)

Aren't most manufacurers switching to 4096-byte sectors?


----------



## Mussels (Apr 30, 2010)

Frick said:


> Aren't most manufacurers switching to 4096-byte sectors?



if they havent yet, they will be... and then XP users will have more reason to go away.


----------

