New Harddrives May Force Windows XP Upgrades
A change in hard drive format may force Windows XP users to upgrade to Windows 7.
An article provided by BBC News paints a rather grim picture for Windows XP consumers. It may seem that those still clinging to the fear that Windows 7 will eventually pan out to be another Windows Vista may have no choice but to take the upgrade plunge thanks to the evolution of the hard drive. This won't mean an early death of XP by any means, but more of a performance hit despite other system specs.
Here's how it will work: most hard drives sold in late 2011 may use an advanced format that will make it easier for hard drive manufacturers to produce bigger drives while making them more reliable and less power hungry. Of course, this is a good thing. Bigger games, bigger software, and our addiction to downloadable media means that hard drives need to keep up with the times. Unfortunately, this is where Windows XP comes crashing down in flames.
Current drives are formatted into blocks of 512 bytes in size--this has been standard since the days DOS ruled PCs. By the end of 2011, all new hard drives will be formatted into blocks of 4K in size. Windows XP doesn't know how to handle sectors of that magnitude. To resolve the conflict, the new drives will have the ability to "pretend" they still use sectors 512 bytes in size. Reading data via the emulation isn't expected to be a problem: it's the data writing that may impact performance.
"All other things being equal you will have a noticeable hard drive reduction in performance," said David Burks, a product marketing manager for storage firm Seagate. He also added that it could make a drive 10-percent slower in some circumstances.
With that said, Windows XP users may have some decision-making to do next year if their current drives fail: purchase a new drive and suffer a reduction in performance via Windows XP, or purchase the new drive and a fresh copy of Windows 7.
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Nice to see this as "news" given that it was an article (HDDs, The Next Generation: Drives With 4KB Sectors On The Way) on February 26th...
2011? It would be perfect time to forget about XP, wouldnt it. If you cant afford it get Linux.
I can't see the "old" drives being unavailable in 2011. You can still easily get IDE drives and SATA has been the standard for a long time. I think the ending of support by microsoft for security fixes will be the only thing that could force the end of xp.
10% reduction in performance isn't 'forcing' anyone to downgrade to Windows lemon, oops 7.
If they're worried they can use the alignment software, jumper or move the partition with gpartd to get full performance back.
Or how about just not doing 512b emulation?
There's only so long you can keep supporting older technology and when support for that tech hampers future growth then it's time to cut ties.
Couldn't something be done with the Southbridge part of a chipset, in order to lessen the performance deficit under XP?
excuse me..
this has already been done..
I got a wd green edtion hard disk and it either needs a jumper setting changed or some software formatter from the wd website.
i did it today
next
its not really a problem, it will just mean its slower in xp then vista and win7
thats why they have that pin hardware hack that makes xp use 64 instead (or so ive been told)
If I am worried about access speed I will install an SSD for booting and main apps. A little speed loss on my drive holding my movies, MP3s and even my games and stuff will not convince me to upgrade my perfectly serviceable and paid for OS.
More to the point, will these drives still work in the masses of Home NAS units out there? That is where the bulk of my data resides.
I do not want all those fancy Win7 features!
Long Live XP!
How on earth does anyone think that Win7 is/could be another Vista? The release wasn't even 1% close to being the Vista release?? Does Dailytech make this up?
Maybe format them back to 512Kb blocks? Can the user do this? Could DailiyTech possibly help to spread a solution? Sensationalist journalism.
Sadly as Microsoft are so caught up in chasing home users they have failed to realise that Windows 7 Pro is just as inferiour to XP Pro as Vista Business was.
Most companies running MS domains use the Windows "Classic" user interface so aero is redundant in the large business market meaning all Vista and 7 offer over XP is lower performance
@Jamesdgeuk2000. Bitlocker? Bitlocker to go? Branchcache? Improved security? VPN? etc etc etc. Take the exams before opening thy mouth and realise the advantages.
As for this 'article?'..
http://hothardware.com/Articles/WD [...] Attention/
quote:
The good news is, Western Digital has already solved the problem. Those of you who want to use an AF drive in Windows XP can either install a hardware jumper (if you plan to use a single, simple partition) or run a software tool called WDAlign. Either solution will restore the drive's full write performance, but WDAlign is what you'll need to use if you've created multiple partitions on a single disk.
@excalibur1814. Bitlocker is irrelevant as all data should be stored on the servers not the clients, XP has VPN ability, as I stated before the benefits of 7 do not offset the performance hit, I didn't migrate my domains to vista and I wont be migrating them to 7 either as XP is better and simpler to use
The BBC swallowed Seagate's marketing hype without checking. WinXP has always had the ability to format disks with 4KByte block size. The block size has several steps, starting at 512byte and extending to 4KByte that you determine at format time. The BBC reports fear, uncertainty and doubt (FUD), a classic negative marketing technique.
@jamesedgeuk2000
Bitlocker is irrelevant???? All data stored on servers?? Yeah, if you have users who all do as they are told and not what suits them - and what about for those that often work where they might not be able to access the VPN
oh sorry, you must mean Bitlocker is irrelevant to you then
@jamesedgeuk2000
Bitlocker is irrelevant???? All data stored on servers?? Yeah, if you have users who all do as they are told and not what suits them - and what about for those that often work where they might not be able to access the VPN
oh sorry, you must mean Bitlocker is irrelevant to you then
yes I do mean its irrelevant to me as I know how to lock down/secure my network so they have no choice but to do as their told
So long as i don't connect to the internet, even if MS tries to kill XP, i can still get it to do many things that these morons are trying to prevent me from doing. For me it's more a functional issue than a nice UI. Bush did say something like "the freedom seeking mind will seek freedom" or some s**t like that anyway. I don't like spyware, hate cloud, online activation and other nonsence.... oh and bloatware and constantly being treated like criminal!
Whats with all this tech stuff ?? I have 2 new boxed 500GB drives under my desk now. And a few 80 and 200 drives kicking around as well. If the XP machine in my daughters room gets a drive issue i can just drop one of those in it.
I'm not about to upgrade to W7 like i have the other machines as its only ever used for MSN/Facebook etc so whats the point.
Some people just plain don't need and wont get anything out of upgrading the OS its not all about being a dinosaur and clinging on to old tech, its more about "if it ain't broke don't fix it" and simple financial viability of upgrading.
Anyone seriously think spending out on a new OS that will see 0 benefits is a viable idea ?
Mactronix