4KB Sector Transition HDD Supplier IDEMA Subcommittee

1
4KB Sector TransitionHDD Supplier IDEMA
Subcommittee

• May 19, 2008

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4KB Sector Transition

• A special Large Sector subcommittee meeting was
  held on April 28, 2008
• Attendance limited to disk drive supplier
  decision makers
• Seagate, Western Digital, Hitachi, Fujitsu,
  Toshiba, Samsung
• The goal of the meeting was to provide clear
  direction to the IDEMA Large Sector Committee and
  all of the OEMs regarding how and when the 4KB
  Sector transition will occur

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Summary of key points

• 1. New disk drive introductions from all disk
  drive suppliers will ship with 4KB sectors on
  disk starting CYQ1 2011
• Implications
• Requires the entire industry food chain to
  prepare for the transition including OEMs, ODMs,
  Software apps, Partition tool providers, etc.
• OEMs requiring 512B Native products will need to
  purchase legacy capacity points/drives
• Decision does not preclude earlier 4KB product
  introductions
• Hitachi is working through product roadmap
  adjustments to confirm their 4KB transition
  timeline

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Summary of key decisions (cont)

• 2. Disk Drive suppliers are planning to ship 4KB
  sector drives with 512B Emulation mode until full
  OS support for 4KB Native is available
• Implications
• OEMs need to establish the priority with
  Microsoft in order to properly enable 4KB Native
  Sector capability
• Disk drive suppliers are planning to ship 512B
  Emulation until 4KB Native is fully supported by
  all OS and Apps (i.e. beyond 2012)
• Enterprise SAS/FC drives may ship as 4KB Native
  to customers where unique support for 4KB sectors
  exists
• A one-time quick format option to change between
  512B Emulation and 4KB Native will be available
• No reformat options for SATA Enterprise
  applications are possiblei.e. Nearline
• SATA Nearline must accept 512B Emulation or
  continue purchasing legacy 512B Native drives
  until a 4KB Native OS solution available

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Summary of key decisions (cont)

• 3. All Disk Drive suppliers will agree to a
  single LBA alignment default in 512B
  Emulationone for SATA, another for SCSI
• Implications
• A single alignment standard should minimize the
  potential pitfalls due to Imaging Install
  processes
• Provides best opportunity to ensure proper
  alignment even if Vista tools are bypassed by
  ODMs, Fortune 500 IT Departments, etc.
• Once new images are created for large sector
  drives, they should be transportable to all disk
  drive suppliers without modification
• Unique customers may require a different
  alignmenthandled on exception basis
• For SATA, one alignment optionalignment
  1provides the best performance for legacy, non
  large sector aware systems.
• For SCSI TBD

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Large Sector Drive Supplier SubcommitteeFurther
recommendations to IDEMA

• 1. Discontinue IDEMA-sponsored work on Large
  Sector Benefit Analysis package to OEMs
• Large Sector Transition plan has reached
  consensus
• Individual disk drive companies will provide
  benefit analysis as applicable for their unique
  design solutions
• 2. De-convolve LDPC discussions from 4KB Sector
  transition
• While there are some mutual implementation
  benefits, LDPC channel integration timeline is
  inconsistent amongst the disk drive suppliers and
  may not be coincident with 4KB sector transition
• 3. Coordinate next IDEMA Large Sector meeting at
  Microsoft campustentative date 5/21/08
• 4. Continue to work relationship with
  SNIAStorage Network Industry Association
• Educate software apps to encourage large sector
  awareness

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Large Sector Drive Supplier SubcommitteeNew
Actions

• 1. Propose T10 and T13 Committee proposals to
  implement a correctible error option to inform
  hosts of misaligned transfers
• Data transferred correctly but host receives a
  direct indication that a performance impact is
  occurring due to misaligned transfers
  (Read-Modify-Write events)
• Proposal owner Curtis Stevens WD
• 2. Propose a T10 standard for Format Device from
  512B host transfers to 4KB host transfers
• Note Leave flexible host sector size for future
  host sector size increase
• Proposal owner Seagate