Western Digital brings Advanced Format to Caviar Green

http://techreport.com/r.x/2009q4/advancedformat.jpg

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For quite some time now, mechanical hard drives have stored data in 512-byte chunks called sectors. That sector size worked for lower capacity points, but as areal densities rise, it's become increasingly inappropriate for new drives. As a result, the industry has decided to transition to a 4KB sector size dubbed Advanced Format.

So-called legacy formatting schemes sandwich each 512-byte sector between Sync/DAM and ECC blocks that handle data address marking and error correction, respectively—and also take up space. You still need those blocks with Advanced Format, but only every 4KB rather than every 512 bytes, which translates to a dramatic reduction in overhead. This approach allows Advanced Format to make more efficient use of a platter's available capacity, and Western Digital expects it to boost useful storage by 7-11%, depending on the implementation. Current 500GB/platter products stand to see an increase in useful capacity of about 10%, which is really quite impressive.

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http://techreport.com/discussions.x/18115

I am no expert, but shouldn't this give a performanceboost aswell?:D

i think it will mean smaller read times, but it seems like the bigger benefit will come from the controllers which will no longer have to address such small blocks...

Ahh, this will improve the stats of my 1Gbit seedbox. ATM, the only thing that hurts my Up/Down speeds is the HDD .. even after assigning 2GB of sys RAM to the Disk Cache. The reason is the # of blocks in the pieces .. each pieces is 16KB and ATM.

With the transition to 4KB from 512B, the Sync/DAM would be quicker (4/piece compared to 16/piece, I guess) and I'll get more space :)

I do ve 2 x 1TB WD Caviar Green (in RAID 0), ATM. I'll make sure they get the new Caviar Green, as n when its out.

Nice.
Though I'd be even happier if they made this backwards compatible, i.e.
release updated firmwares for older drives, too.

I'm glad I didn't already build my RAID 10 storage array. I was going to go with WD Blacks, for speed, but perhaps I'll use the new Greens.

I want to know two things...

What are the results of a bench vs other drives...

How quiet is this?

All my WD drives (excluding raptors) are fairly slow and loud compared to my samsungs which I can't even tell are one unless I put my ear to the drive.

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Originally Posted by Smartidiot89

I am no expert, but shouldn't this give a performanceboost aswell?:D

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Well using 4K instead of 512 bytes sectors normally allows the hard drive to operate within it's rated specs as far as speed is concerned. Which is why people use it even though it uses more space. We would need to see benchmark results to find out if there is any performance improvements beyond what they are rated for. But honestly, if it did improve specs for the harddrive not only would they charge more but it would be their marketing theme IMO. Also, what about their Caviar Black Series? I mean that's their better model. Shouldn't they be doing this to their Black hard drives?

1. So this will be a seamless transition on current models or can we expect drives?
2. Can we expect any compatibility issues with Raid controllers and stuff like that?
3. How will these work in Raid with current ones?

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Originally Posted by Eastcoasthandle

Also, what about their Caviar Black Series? I mean that's their better model. Shouldn't they be doing this to their Black hard drives?

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Thats what I was wondering, why introduce this on a slower cheaper green drive rather than improve the higher end drives where they can make more money and capitalize on any performance gains.

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Originally Posted by highoctane

Thats what I was wondering, why introduce this on a slower cheaper green drive rather than improve the higher end drives where they can make more money and capitalize on any performance gains.

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This makes me doubt if the performance improvement is any significant.
Probably not.

I'm starting to believe this is nothing more then marketing. It was obvious they needed to improve yields on their Caviar Green and I'm speculating that this was part of whatever problems they fixed. Now they are marketing it as the "new and improved Caviar Green!". It probably won't be better then the Black because if it did they would be using it for the Black and charging a higher price for it. But I'm just speculating on all of this. We still have to wait for benchmark results.

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Originally Posted by zalbard

This makes me doubt if the performance improvement is any significant.
Probably not.

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Bigger blocks = fewer reads = lower power consumption? My guess.

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Originally Posted by Eastcoasthandle

I'm starting to believe this is nothing more then marketing. It was obvious they needed to improve yields on their Caviar Green and I'm speculating that this was part of whatever problems they fixed. Now they are marketing it as the "new and improved Caviar Green!". It probably won't be better then the Black because if it did they would be using it for the Black and charging a higher price for it. But I'm just speculating on all of this. We still have to wait for benchmark results.

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Before you go off completely freaking out, WD has been introducing every advancement (this, higher density, etc) on the green drives since their release. It's easier to make things work on slower spindle speeds.

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Originally Posted by ecidious

Before you go off completely freaking out, WD has been introducing every advancement (this, higher density, etc) on the green drives since their release. It's easier to make things work on slower spindle speeds.

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Nah, it' nothing like that. I'm simply curious as to why they choose Cavair Green and would like to see if that improves performance or if it's part of any fixes for the hard drive.

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Originally Posted by Oj101

Bigger blocks = fewer reads = lower power consumption? My guess.

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I believe the total area used for 512 bytes of data is ~528 bytes. For 4096 byte blocks, this would probably go to ~4152 or maybe the same @~4112. Either way you can see how minimal this is overall. 1/32 vs. 1/256. That's 3% vs 0.4%. That's the speed increase we can expect from this solely.

However, I imagine some latencies will go down a bit. Heatwise, again, that's the difference we would see. At 5W that Green uses.. not important.

Still, this is gain that WD gains without much work so it's good nonetheless.

(I might be wrong about the above numbers of additional ECC area but I doubt it's much greater)

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Originally Posted by [XC] Synthetickiller

All my WD drives (excluding raptors) are fairly slow and loud compared to my samsungs which I can't even tell are one unless I put my ear to the drive.

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I got 8 WD20EADS (2TB Greens) in an external DAS case (connected to Areca 1280). I don't hear them at all. The rest of the system are SSDs only. The case has 4 fans though because the freakin' RAID cards heat bloody much.

Nice. It should mean at least a very slight performance boost, presuming this is 4096-byte logical with 4096-byte physical sectors rather than 512-byte logical over 4096-byte physical (which, yes, did/does exist). It should be the former though.

The big saver is that you can now pack a bit more data into those faster outer cylinders. For a 512-byte platter you have 192bytes of ECC overhead over 4096 bytes; for a 4096-byte platter you have 100. The savings is 92 bytes/4096 bytes (~2.24%). Along with that there will also be some slightly relaxed processing requirements on the drive (I wouldn't worry about this affecting anything as it's a bit of a misnomer) and fewer bytes given up to gap/preamble. Overall let's say it save you about 2.5-3% in space. The actual speed boost comes where the slowest 3% of your data can now move up a bit, but how much speed you come out with in the end is questionable and subject to math I really don't want to go into.

The annoying thing is that the increase is small enough I don't think you could conclusively show it in tests these days, but the math says it should be there.


Edit: On highly fragmented drives this could, I suppose, be beneficial... but you really shouldn't see 512-byte fragmentation anyway these days.

Would be nice if they were to release this for my WD Velociraptor 300GB
John

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Originally Posted by Eastcoasthandle

Also, what about their Caviar Black Series? I mean that's their better model. Shouldn't they be doing this to their Black hard drives?

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Lately it seems that Western Digital announces new stuff for the Green series first for some reason... Atleast that was the case with 2GB drives

About friggen time! Now if they can add in DIX/DIF (4160 byte sectors) this would be a good thing. Having been talked about for what 4-5 years that this was 'coming' it's LONG overdue.

Is this the drive?
http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.asp?driveid=763

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Originally Posted by onethreehill

Is this the drive?
http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.asp?driveid=763

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Ya, they wil have 64MB (other Green series only have 32MB) cache and will be model EARS.

so are these green series good or what ? i want to buy Hd with tera or higher capacity question is which brand has better drive ?

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Originally Posted by eric66

so are these green series good or what ? i want to buy Hd with tera or higher capacity question is which brand has better drive ?

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Even though this is not the place to ask that, cause it could lead to broad discussion: Yes the GP drives are great and well worth buying.


-Now, I hope someone will check soon if these new drives, support TLER, through wdtler utility:)
What is their formatted capacity, now?:)

-edit: its 1953,51GB, looks the same to EADS and FYPS to me...

This will decrease performance on older operating systems, but the question is by how much...

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Originally Posted by Machinus

This will decrease performance on older operating systems, but the question is by how much...

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the question is who cares?

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Western Digital’s Advanced Format: The 4K Sector Transition Begins
The first drives will be Caviar Green drives using multiple 500GB platters – so the 1TB, 1.5TB, and 2TB Caviar Green. These drives will be shipping any day now, and can be identified through two different methods: 1) They all have 64MB of cache - the first WD Caviar Green drives to come with that much cache - and 2) They all have EARS in the drive model number, e.g. WD10EARS.

As we stated before, in spite of the benefits of 4K sectors, Western Digital is not pushing these drives as part of any major product launch. Rather they’re going to be quietly trickling in to the marketplace. Expect a price premium at first (as with any other new product) before settling down. We don’t have a drive on-hand to review, but from the fact that this is a low-key launch, WD isn’t painting any expectations of a performance difference, although this will be something to test in the future.

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http://anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=3691

these might be my next upgrade drives once i fell my 2x1TB

WD10EADS are the best storage drives i ever had; no transfer of vibration with stock lianli rubber grommets and completely inaudible over my corsair HX620 @ idle which is a very silent psu :up:

best storage solution out there is SSD (samsung RBB or intel X25) + WD green power drives :yepp:

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Originally Posted by pa9797

Today went down to SLS and came back with a pair of 1TB of EARS.

http://i598.photobucket.com/albums/t...IMG_0376-1.jpg

This pair was manufactured on 10 Dec and Made in Thailand. The new EARS come with 64mb Cache instead of 32mb Cache.

It has also instructions written on the Decal if you are running Windows XP as your OS to achieve the benefits of Advanced format drive:

http://i598.photobucket.com/albums/t...l/IMG_0377.jpg

Comparing the EARS and the EADS

http://i598.photobucket.com/albums/t...l/IMG_0378.jpg

SRP per drive is $138

The other improvement is that this is an Advance Format drive.

http://i598.photobucket.com/albums/t...jl/WDGreen.gif

In terms of performance, The EARS as compared with the EADS 's 2 versions (P8B0 and M2B0):

http://i598.photobucket.com/albums/tt66/plimjl/Y5B1.gif

http://i598.photobucket.com/albums/tt66/plimjl/P8B0.gif

http://i598.photobucket.com/albums/tt66/plimjl/M2B0.gif

Even with 64Mb cache , its performance still not as good as the P8B0 version which comes with a full 5 years warranty.

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http://forums.hardwarezone.com.sg/sh....php?t=2606346

But notice on their spec sheets that WDC is not showing any improvement in error rates. 4K sectors (and the better efficiency used by the 80 or 100byte (80 here) ECC over the previous method should give a huge boost. That alone would be a selling point to me but with it lacking I don't see any real benefit here. :(

So, does anyone know if the EARS drives support TLER with the WDTLER tool ?

What does he mean by it doesn't come with a five year warranty when according to the label it does? :confused:

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Originally Posted by zozo

So, does anyone know if the EARS drives support TLER with the WDTLER tool ?

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99.9% no.:(
They disabled it to prevent enthusiast users like us cannibalizing their RE4 drive sales!:(

Which I'm fine with... but please drop that enormous premium on them WD!:D