RE and SE

ep0x73

2[H]4U
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Sep 5, 2013
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Looking over the stats from WD the RE still uses 512n which is odd today and the SE uses AF

Technically native 4K [if using windows 8] should make AF drives faster then emulation, right?

This would point to WD wanted the RE to be most compatible with all systems, even older ones.

Seems odd two data center enterprise type drives with different formats.

I looked for benches for AF drives in 7 and 8 to see if there is any noticeable difference but could not find one.
 
RE is designed for high usage. SE is even a step down from the reds, according to wd.

You wouldn't want to use SE where performance matters. SE is made to have large space, and last, performance will suffer.

RE is designed to be fast and perform.

Not sure why you say win8, ntfs has defaulted to 4k or larger clustersize ever since it was made. This will make it work fine without emulation, as long as you setup the start of the ntfs partition correctly.
 
It's how it's reported, logical and physical, win 8 does both and 7 does not.

Benchtests and reviews shows the SE to beat the red's in all tests, they are faster since they are 7200 instead of 5900.

Both SE and RE use 800/platter and same heads, same cache yet the RE has twice the durability load/unload.

SE can do much more TB per year then the reds which are just consumer drives.

The main question is why the RE and XE are still using 512n whereas the SE is using AF. For comparison red's use AF too.

"While versus the Red, Se definitely carries a price premium, it’s also a far better performer, carries enterprise features and bumps the warranty to a full 5 years (vs. 3). For many, including myself, that’s a justified premium. Sometimes, it’s hard to put a price on piece of mind, especially when you expect these drives to store your important data."

2r4msed.jpg
 
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Not sure why you say win8, ntfs has defaulted to 4k or larger clustersize ever since it was made. This will make it work fine without emulation, as long as you setup the start of the ntfs partition correctly.


File system cluster size and drive sector size are different concepts. Clusters often are made up of multiple logically contiguous disk sectors. In NTFS case a 4 KiB cluster would be 8 disk sectors (512 B each). Sectors are accessed directly by the OS using LBA, file systems abstract this even further in to clusters, and further yet in to files and directories. The problem here is how the OS interacts with the drive. If an OS is coded such that a given LBA maps to a 512 B sector when it is really a 4 KiB sector then that is a big problem.
 
There is actually a disk that lists 4k logical? instead of 4k physical?

It doesn't matter how it's mapped, as long as the disk accesses it and aligns correctly with the physical side. If it's accesssed 512b logica, or 4k logical, yes, that could be an os thing, and win7 wouldn't support. But no one makes a 4k logical disk yet.
 
Not a disk, windows 8 can see logical and physical though.

For hard disk drives working in the 4K native mode, there is no emulation layer in place, and the disk media directly exposes its 4 KB physical sector size to the system firmware and operating system. That way, externally visible logical sectors organization of the 4K native drives is directly mapped to their internal physical sectors organization.

Readiness of the support for 4 KB logical sectors within operating systems differs among their types, vendors and versions.Though, as of October 2013, there are still no 4K native hard drives available on the market, and all Advanced Format devices are utilizing the 512e emulation instead.

You are correct none are available. When/If they are available without needing emulation they should be much faster on 8 then prior OS's.

"Windows 8 To Support Advanced Format (AF) Disks natively"
 
4K is coming later to the RE apparently, the RE's get the latest features later due too stability and testing for enterprise use.
 
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