Seagate disk formatting software software#

: Figure 3 In 2010, industry standards for the first official generation of long data sectors using a configuration of 4096 bytes per sector, or 4K, were completed. In August 2005, Seagate shipped test drives with 1K physical sectors to industry partners for testing.

Seagate disk formatting software software#

The storage industry trade organization, International Disk Drive Equipment and Materials Association (IDEMA), responded by organizing the IDEMA Long Data Sector Committee in 2000, where IDEMA and leading hardware and software suppliers collaborated on the definition and development of standards governing long data sectors, including methods by which compatibility with legacy computing components would be supported. Without revolutionary breakthroughs in magnetic recording system technologies, areal densities, and with them the storage capacities, hard disk drives were projected to stagnate. The use of long data sectors was suggested in 1998 in a technical paper issued by the National Storage Industry Consortium (NSIC) calling attention to the conflict between continuing increases in areal density and the traditional 512-byte-per-sector format used in hard disk drives. Larger sectors enable the integration of stronger error correction algorithms to maintain data integrity at higher storage densities. IDEMA Long Data Sector Committee, composed of Dell, Fujitsu (now Toshiba Storage Device Corporation), Hewlett-Packard, Hitachi Global Storage Technologies, IDEMA, LSI Corporation, Maxtor (now Seagate), Microsoft, Phoenix Technologies, Samsung, Seagate Technology, Western DigitalĪdvanced Format ( AF) is any disk sector format used to store data on magnetic disks in hard disk drives (HDDs) that exceeds 512, 520, or 528 bytes per sector, such as the 4096, 4112, 4160, and 4224-byte (4 KB) sectors of an Advanced Format Drive ( AFD). 4K physical sectors on the drive media with 512 byte logical configurationĤK physical sectors on the drive media and 4K configuration reported to the hostĪ host system which works equally well with legacy 512 as well as 512e hard disk drives