which new drives use 4 kB sectors?

I presume anything over 2 tebibytes will.

Otherwise, I guess I must read the specs for every drive that

I consider buying?



I have a quirky software package that only runs under

NT/2000/XP/2003 but ****s itself with Vista or later.

And I don't like kludges, just wanna plug **** in and go.

On 15/06/2011 15:33, Kulin Remailer wrote:
I presume anything over 2 tebibytes will.

Otherwise, I guess I must read the specs for every drive that

I consider buying?



I have a quirky software package that only runs under

NT/2000/XP/2003 but ****s itself with Vista or later.

And I don't like kludges, just wanna plug **** in and go.


Then buy a 500 GB disk. The chances are very high that it has 512 byte
sectors.

And what's the worst that can happen? The 4K sector drives lie to the
OS and claim to be 512 byte sectors. They will be a bit slower
(especially for writing) if your partitions are not aligned, but they
will still work fine.

Wed, 15 Jun 2011 17:22:58 +0200, David Brown wrote:

On 15/06/2011 15:33, Kulin Remailer wrote:

I presume anything over 2 tebibytes will.

Correct. With emphasis on the word *over*

As in *over* 2TB.

Otherwise, I guess I must read the specs for every drive that
I consider buying?

I have a quirky software package that only runs under

NT/2000/XP/2003 but ****s itself with Vista or later.

And I don't like kludges, just wanna plug **** in and go.

Then buy a 500 GB disk. The chances are very high that it has 512 byte
sectors.

And what's the worst that can happen? The 4K sector drives lie to the
OS and claim to be 512 byte sectors. They will be a bit slower
(especially for writing) if your partitions are not aligned, but they
will still work fine.

My hunch at this point is that if there is a culprit,
with 4k sector HDD, it is with 3rd party software
used within more complicated setups within
either Win Vista and/or Win7.

My 2nd hunch is that this guy (Kulin Remailer)
saw my response to Castor Nageur in his thread.
I'll wait until Castor Nageur tries what I suggested
and gets back with how that goes.

Bill

Kulin Remailer wrote:

I presume anything over 2 tebibytes will.

I did too, until I looked at a Hitachi datasheet which stated
explicitly that one of their 3TB drives in a series which
includes drives smaller than that has 512 byte sectors.

Corse one possibility is that that is an error in the datasheet.

Otherwise, I guess I must read the specs for every drive that
I consider buying?

Not all of them specify that as I discovered after seeing that.

I have a quirky software package that only runs under
NT/2000/XP/2003 but ****s itself with Vista or later.

And I don't like kludges, just wanna plug **** in and go.

And the other problem is that drives over 2.2TB have a different problem
and those older OSs just dont have any support for them natively.

Kulin Remailer wrote:

I have a quirky software package that only runs under

NT/2000/XP/2003 but ****s itself with Vista or later.

And I don't like kludges, just wanna plug **** in and go.

I may be wrong, but I believe all hard drives with 64MB caches use 4KB
physical sectors. But even if you can't get drives with 512B sectors,
just use Linux G-Parted to create partitions that are aligned. It's
faster to do this and copy existing partitions to the new drive than
to use alignment software.

Kulin Remailer wrote:
I presume anything over 2 tebibytes will.

Otherwise, I guess I must read the specs for every drive that

I consider buying?

Yes. For the moment, smaller drives (as the 500GB suggested
by somebody else here) will be safe, but that can change at
any time.

I have a quirky software package that only runs under
NT/2000/XP/2003 but ****s itself with Vista or later.

And I don't like kludges, just wanna plug **** in and go.

Have you considered running this software (or rather an image with
NT/2000/XP/2003 and this software) in a VM? I recently
made good experiences with VirtualBox(free). VMware Player (also free)
is a second option, but I don't like it very much.

Arno
--
Arno Wagner, Dr. sc. techn., Dipl. Inform., CISSP -- Email:
GnuPG: ID: 1E25338F FP: 0C30 5782 9D93 F785 E79C 0296 797F 6B50 1E25 338F
----
Cuddly UI's are the manifestation of wishful thinking. -- Dylan Evans

On 16/06/2011 03:57, Arno wrote:
Kulin wrote:
I presume anything over 2 tebibytes will.

Otherwise, I guess I must read the specs for every drive that

I consider buying?

Yes. For the moment, smaller drives (as the 500GB suggested
by somebody else here) will be safe, but that can change at
any time.

I have a quirky software package that only runs under
NT/2000/XP/2003 but ****s itself with Vista or later.

And I don't like kludges, just wanna plug **** in and go.

Have you considered running this software (or rather an image with
NT/2000/XP/2003 and this software) in a VM? I recently
made good experiences with VirtualBox(free). VMware Player (also free)
is a second option, but I don't like it very much.


That implies having a modern OS as the host. Unless the OP is familiar
with Linux, it would mean buying a license for Win7, installing that and
getting familiar with it, the getting familiar with a virtual machine,
just so that he could get his partitions 4K aligned.

Much as I like virtual machines, and see them as a good long-term
solution for inconvenient programs (or inconvenient users like myself,
who prefer XP to Win7), I think buying a 500 GB disk is going to be a
lot easier, a lot cheaper, and a lot faster to get up and running. And
as I said in another post, a 4K sector disk will work fine with XP, just
slightly slower.

If the OP /does/ want a virtual machine, I strongly recommend
VirtualBox. It is properly free (open source) for the main part, with
only the USB and RDP extensions being merely cost-free. VMware Player
is more like a free demo version - it is feature-limited in the hope
that you will buy the full product. It's probably a good choice if you
use other VMware products already, but otherwise go for VirtualBox.

David Brown wrote
Arno wrote
Kulin wrote

I presume anything over 2 tebibytes will.

Otherwise, I guess I must read the specs for every drive that

I consider buying?

Yes. For the moment, smaller drives (as the 500GB suggested by somebody else here) will be safe, but that can change
at any time.

I have a quirky software package that only runs under
NT/2000/XP/2003 but ****s itself with Vista or later.

And I don't like kludges, just wanna plug **** in and go.

Have you considered running this software (or rather an image with NT/2000/XP/2003 and this software) in a VM? I
recently
made good experiences with VirtualBox(free). VMware Player (also free) is a second option, but I don't like it very
much.

That implies having a modern OS as the host. Unless the OP is familiar with Linux, it would mean buying a license for
Win7,
installing that and getting familiar with it, the getting familiar with a virtual machine, just so that he could get
his partitions 4K aligned.

Much as I like virtual machines, and see them as a good long-term
solution for inconvenient programs (or inconvenient users like myself,
who prefer XP to Win7), I think buying a 500 GB disk is going to be a
lot easier, a lot cheaper, and a lot faster to get up and running.

Or just buying a drive whose datasheet you trust on the sector size question.

Or use the Acronis ute thats free.

And as I said in another post, a 4K sector disk will work fine with XP, just slightly slower.

Thats not what some of the drive manufacturers claim.

On 16/06/2011 11:50, Rod Speed wrote:
David Brown wrote
Arno wrote
Kulin wrote

I presume anything over 2 tebibytes will.

Otherwise, I guess I must read the specs for every drive that

I consider buying?

Yes. For the moment, smaller drives (as the 500GB suggested by
somebody else here) will be safe, but that can change at any
time.

I have a quirky software package that only runs under
NT/2000/XP/2003 but ****s itself with Vista or later.

And I don't like kludges, just wanna plug **** in and go.

Have you considered running this software (or rather an image
with NT/2000/XP/2003 and this software) in a VM? I recently made
good experiences with VirtualBox(free). VMware Player (also free)
is a second option, but I don't like it very much.

That implies having a modern OS as the host. Unless the OP is
familiar with Linux, it would mean buying a license for Win7,
installing that and getting familiar with it, the getting familiar
with a virtual machine, just so that he could get his partitions 4K
aligned.

Much as I like virtual machines, and see them as a good long-term
solution for inconvenient programs (or inconvenient users like
myself, who prefer XP to Win7), I think buying a 500 GB disk is
going to be a lot easier, a lot cheaper, and a lot faster to get up
and running.

Or just buying a drive whose datasheet you trust on the sector size
question.

Or use the Acronis ute thats free.

And as I said in another post, a 4K sector disk will work fine with
XP, just slightly slower.

Thats not what some of the drive manufacturers claim.


If there are any /honest/ 4K sector drives out there, then that might be
the case - XP may not be happy with drives that say they have 4K
sectors. But the whole point of lying about it and claiming to be 512
sector drives was to make them usable with XP (and earlier Windows),
even if it risks poor performance on non-Windows systems or newer Windows.

WD labels their 4KB drives with EARS at the end. Grab a EADS/EVDS drive.