SmartAlign Technology for Advanced Format hard drives

Paving

the way to a

hassle-free adoption of the 4K sector standard


It is

inevitable. All major hard drive companies have agreed to adopt a new

sector size, known as Advanced Format, as the new standard defined

and maintained by IDEMA (The International Disk Drive Equipment and

Materials Association). The Advanced Format standard mandates that

hard drive sector sizes migrate from the current 512 bytes to 4096

bytes, or 4K. This change will help the industry deliver higher

capacity points along with improved error correction as a result of

improvements in format efficiency. Hard drive companies have agreed

that all new laptop and desktop hard drive platforms shipped after

January 1, 2011, will be Advanced Format compatible.

Managing

the

transition-hard drive partition alignment


While

the transition to Advanced Format hard drives is good for customers

and manufacturers alike, the transition requires knowledge on the

topic of hard drive partition alignment. For example, Advanced Format

hard drives use 4K sectors on the media, but still need to

communicate to computers with legacy 512-byte sector logic. This is

called 512-byte emulation and requires that physical hard drive

partitions be aligned to logical partitions used by the computer.

When this does not happen, partitions are said to be misaligned and

hard drive performance is negatively impacted.

A

hassle-free solution


Until

now, the only solution to managing these misalignment conditions was

to deploy software utilities to identify and realign partitions. This

process requires extra time and process steps during hard drive

integration.


Seagate

SmartAlign technology resolves Advanced Format misalignment

conditions while preserving hard drive performance. Unlike other

Advanced Format hard drives, Seagate drives with SmartAlign

technology do not require time-consuming software utilities.

Features and benefits

-

SmartAlign technology is a utility-free solution, saving time and

extra steps in hard drive integration.

-

SmartAlign technology maintains consistent hard drive performance,

even when it encounters hard drive partition misalignment conditions.

-

SmartAlign technology allows for a hassle-free adoption of 4K

technology, an inevitable transition everyone will need to make.