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As of currently, a typical magnetic hard disk are able to hold 512 bytes of data per sector. Nothing wrong with that since it has been in use for the past 30 years or so but as hard disks capacity is increasing progressively each day, the storage industry as a whole has been trying to find ways to churn out more space per square inch. Apparently, they have found one solution: increase the amount of data per sector to 4,096 bytes. That is exactly what Western Digital’s Advanced Format technology does. Find out more, right after the break.
So, how does Western Digital achieves this? Simple; by rearranging the disk sector’s architecture. Here's a little diagram to show you how WD does it: Through Advanced Format, the company claims that they are able to gainaround 7 to 11 per cent in disk space. Not only that, Western Digitalalso stated that their technology has also improve burst errorcorrection by 50%, thanks to the larger Error Correction Code blockthat the Advanced Format uses.However, as many of current computer systems and software are notequipped or designed with native 4,096 bytes per sector support,current Advanced Format hard drives communicate to them through 512bytes emulation at the drive interface level. That being said, alloperating systems such as Windows Vista, Windows 7, Mac and Linux arefully ready for the new format straight out of the box; with theexception of Windows XP as the new format is not optimized for the 9years old operating system. That doesn't mean that Windows XP users will not able to use WD's Advanced Format drives. All they got to do is use a software called WD Align that will ensure those drives run as they intended to on Windows XP without any further problem. One doesn’t have to wait long to see WD’s Advanced Format hard drivesin the market. In fact, they are already available right now andare recognizable by this label: For more lowdown of WD’s Advanced Format technology, click on to WD’s official website (http://tinyurl.com/y9hcgwr).
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