External Advanced Format 4k sectors Hard Drive for Win 7, XP, Ubuntu


  1. Posts : 15
    Windows 7 Pro 32 bit
       #1

    External Advanced Format 4k sectors Hard Drive for Win 7, XP, Ubuntu


    I need your advice!

    I'm currently looking for a new external 3.5" hard drive to pair with external eSATA+USB enclosure, to use across Win 7, XP and Ubuntu. I borrowed from a friend and tested a new WD 1TB EARS green drive as single partition storage drive connected internally at Win 7 and XP, it is fast, cool and quite compare with my other 4 internal drives, performance seems on par with my 1 year old WD Black. However, I also saw bad comments about this new technology of advanced format 4k hard drive for XP and Ubuntu.

    Now, I'm searching for a good external 3.5" eSATA+USB enclosure and very soon going to buy the WD EARS hard drive because I'm out of hard disk space for my data storage. I need at least another 1TB, but I'm afraid that I may have degraded performance for using across Win XP, Win 7 & Ubuntu.

    All my current hard drives are WD, so far so good. WD is my choice for good warranty service.

    Shall I get this EARS drive as external cross platform single partition storage? If I buy it, which partition tool to use to ensure that it will get optimum performance across all abovementioned platforms?
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  2. Posts : 1,653
    Windows 10 Pro. EFI boot partition, full EFI boot
       #2

    Why not get the 1TB EADS without the advanced formatting and save yourself some headaches?
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  3. Posts : 15
    Windows 7 Pro 32 bit
    Thread Starter
       #3

    GeneO said:
    Why not get the 1TB EADS without the advanced formatting and save yourself some headaches?
    Thanks for your suggestion, I knew it and I just want to get prepared and face it.

    I already have 2 units of 1TB EADS in my desktop, they are slightly slower than 1TB EARS, probably due to older firmware, but this is not important. I heard EARS may replace EADS soon, and eventually all other hard drive manufacturers may use 4k advanced format, so that's why I ask.

    One of the major reason I'm still keeping XP is my Win 7 cannot beat my XP in massive file transfer.
    Last edited by tongks; 26 Oct 2010 at 01:39. Reason: correct typo & mis-estimation
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  4. Posts : 1,653
    Windows 10 Pro. EFI boot partition, full EFI boot
       #4

    If you just have 1 partition, then you can jumper the drive to make it look like 512 byte sectors - I wouldn't advise that. You will have to run a western digital tool to align the partitions on 4096 byte boundaries for XP to access them I believe. If you create the partitions with Windows 7, perhaps they will already be 4096 byte aligned. I don't know about Ubuntu.

    If you are looking to the future you should replace that XP box with a Windows 7 box, even though I am sure you have good reason to keep it now.

    - Gene
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  5. Posts : 7,878
    Windows 7 Ultimate x64
       #5

    tongks said:
    Thanks for your suggestion, I knew it and I just want to get prepared and face it, because I may hit total of 1PB storage by end of next year.
    Woah...you have 2TB now...and expect within a year that you will increase to over 1000TB???? What in the world are you doing?
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  6. Posts : 15
    Windows 7 Pro 32 bit
    Thread Starter
       #6

    pparks1 said:
    tongks said:
    Thanks for your suggestion, I knew it and I just want to get prepared and face it, because I may hit total of 1PB storage by end of next year.
    Woah...you have 2TB now...and expect within a year that you will increase to over 1000TB???? What in the world are you doing?
    oops, sorry, my big mistake, I mis-estimated it, edited to prevent further confusion.

    Currently 2x 1TB WD Green, 1x 1TB Black + 1x 320G WD Blue in the XP box, I'm HD movie fan.
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  7. Posts : 15
    Windows 7 Pro 32 bit
    Thread Starter
       #7

    GeneO said:
    If you just have 1 partition, then you can jumper the drive to make it look like 512 byte sectors - I wouldn't advise that. You will have to run a western digital tool to align the partitions on 4096 byte boundaries for XP to access them I believe. If you create the partitions with Windows 7, perhaps they will already be 4096 byte aligned.
    - Gene
    I google and found that the jumper cannot be used for external cross platform.

    Yes, single partition it in Win 7 and use in XP no problem. From further study, now i think Ubuntu should have no problem in partition the drive, I just have to buy 1 and test it out.

    Is there any Bootable CD partition tool (like UBCD4Win in USB/CD) that can do the same result like Win 7 to 4k aligned single partition drive? Is there an bootable CD tool that can check if a drive is 4k aligned?
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