In Microsoft building Windows 8 blog, Bryan Matthew, Storage & File System team manager at Microsoft, describes how Windows 8 supports and handle hard disks of larger capacities while assuring that every sectors and blocks of large hard disks will be fully utilized.
Windows 8 can support drive of up to 2.2 Tera byte or more in size and give fast startup, secure bootup, minimum level of failure etc. and many other advanced features which are lacking in most other operating systems.
This implementation is bit tricky for Microsoft as well as requires manufacturer to change the traditional architecture of any hard disk. In late 2009, Manufacturer's agreed to release hard drive of large block size (4KB in size, enough for storing ECC codes and your data) entitled 'Advanced Format' disks to meet the modern LBA (Logical block addressing) scheme and less signal-to-noise-ratio(SNR) when reading data from the disk platters.
[Read Also: How to Restore Traditional Start Button in Windows 8]
In 'AF' series, two types of disks are currently available in the market i.e. 512-byte emulation short for '512e' and '4K Native' with only one difference that is capable to utilize full 4K block in 512e.
Above figure will give the clear idea about how 512byte emulation drive works and save data in each of the empty 4k sectors if it founds any and thus filling all the free space in your large capacity disks.
Additionally, to ensure full disk utilization, Microsoft further divided these challenges into three sub parts, which is :
Windows 8 can support drive of up to 2.2 Tera byte or more in size and give fast startup, secure bootup, minimum level of failure etc. and many other advanced features which are lacking in most other operating systems.
This implementation is bit tricky for Microsoft as well as requires manufacturer to change the traditional architecture of any hard disk. In late 2009, Manufacturer's agreed to release hard drive of large block size (4KB in size, enough for storing ECC codes and your data) entitled 'Advanced Format' disks to meet the modern LBA (Logical block addressing) scheme and less signal-to-noise-ratio(SNR) when reading data from the disk platters.
[Read Also: How to Restore Traditional Start Button in Windows 8]
In 'AF' series, two types of disks are currently available in the market i.e. 512-byte emulation short for '512e' and '4K Native' with only one difference that is capable to utilize full 4K block in 512e.
Additionally, to ensure full disk utilization, Microsoft further divided these challenges into three sub parts, which is :
- Addressing Method
- Disk Partitioning Scheme
- Firmware implementation in PC – Weather BIOS or UEFI
As we talk earlier, Windows 8 uses latest addressing method called logical block addressing (LBA) instead of CHS (Cylinder-Head-Sector) method to clearly define sizes of every sector, beginning from sector 0 to sector n. Where as, in CHS method, sizes of hard disk are limited i.e. Utmost 160 GB and makes it typical to locate any particular block of data in large disks.
Disk partitioning scheme is also updated from traditional Master Boot Record partition table (MBR) to GUID partition table (GPT), part of the UEFI (Unified Extensible Firmware Interface) to support partitioning scheme in drive of up to 2.2TB in size.
PC firmware begin to use UEFI techniques instead of old BIOS hardware initialization method to work well with GPT partitioning scheme and provides great level of security during Windows booting as well as higher security for your valuable stuff.
These three methods UEFI Firmware + GPT Partitioning + LBA collectively allow Windows 8 to fully utilize capacities of large hard disks without trouble.
Windows 8 will soon start to support even great sizes of hard disk like 8TB and ensures full data safety.
Disk partitioning scheme is also updated from traditional Master Boot Record partition table (MBR) to GUID partition table (GPT), part of the UEFI (Unified Extensible Firmware Interface) to support partitioning scheme in drive of up to 2.2TB in size.
PC firmware begin to use UEFI techniques instead of old BIOS hardware initialization method to work well with GPT partitioning scheme and provides great level of security during Windows booting as well as higher security for your valuable stuff.
These three methods UEFI Firmware + GPT Partitioning + LBA collectively allow Windows 8 to fully utilize capacities of large hard disks without trouble.
Windows 8 will soon start to support even great sizes of hard disk like 8TB and ensures full data safety.
