Advanced Format Drives

[revnull]

I have a few WD20EARS drives that I was using (jumpered) in my old WHSv1 box. When I upgraded to WHS2011 I removed the jumpers since 4k formatted drives were now supported. I’ve initialized them GPT and make sure they are 4k formatted. They work fine and perform as expected, but StableBit Scanner does not report them as “advanced format” drives. Is this an error or are these drives not really 4k drives?

 

 

[Christopher (Drashna)]

Are you using the "Disk Details" section to determine this?

[revnull]

Yes, under the "Overview" section of Disk Details.

[Christopher (Drashna)]

And just to make sure, it says it's reporting the sector size as 512, and "not reporting as advanced format"?

[revnull]

Correct.

[p3x-749]

AFAIR these older EARS-models lie about their true sector size....regardless of the jumper...it'll be dependent of model/size and firmware version..

 

Edit: the jumper sets the offset for sector alignment by 512bytes...it'll not change how the disk reports logical and physical sector size.

[revnull]

Is there a method for updating the firmware to a version that reports the data accurately?

[p3x-749]

...can't tell..google is your friend...I am still running a couple of the 2TB models in my NAS, on ZFS and forced them to align sectors to advanced format, but I never cared what they show/report as they were/are running fine..

[AMCross]

AFAIR these older EARS-models lie about their true sector size....regardless of the jumper...it'll be dependent of model/size and firmware version..

 

Edit: the jumper sets the offset for sector alignment by 512bytes...it'll not change how the disk reports logical and physical sector size.

 

 

totally agree with the above had 10 x 2tb green ears drives and some reported correctly some didn't

 

 

good excuse to buy some wd 3TB reds :-)

[Christopher (Drashna)]

I chatted with alex a bit about this, and:

It is possible that the firmware on the drive is not reporting Advanced Format properly.

 

On that DirectIO test app, click on the "..." button next to "Identify". Look for "Logical sectors / physical". That is what we look for when reporting advanced format or not. If it's 1 (0x4000), then it's not advanced format (or just not reporting it). If it's 8 (0x5000, or 0x6000) then it means it's reporting advanced format.