Dell PowerEdge R530 - Manual (Page 3)

3 4K Sector HDD FAQ | Dell Inc., 2014
Common Names
Reported Logical
Sector Size Reported Physical
Sector Size
Windows Version with Support
512-byte Native,
512n
512 bytes 512 bytes All Windows versions
Advanced Format,
AF, 512e, 512E,
512-byte
Emulation 512 bytes 4096 bytes • Windows Server 2012
• Windows Server 2008 R2 w/
MS KB 982018
• Windows Server 2008 R2
SP1
• Windows Server 2008 w/
MS KB 2553708
Advanced Format
native, AFn, 4K
Native, 4Kn* 4096 bytes 4096 bytes Windows Server 2012 (4k data
disks are supported and as boot
disks in UEFI mode)
Note: While not stressed in the preceding table, Windows Server 2003, and Windows Server 2003
R2 do not support 512e or 4Kn media. While the system may boot up and be able to operate
minimally, there may be unknown scenarios of functionality issues, data loss, or sub-optimal
performance. Thus, Dell strongly cautions against using 512e media with Windows such as Windows
Server 2003.
Common Names
Reported Logical
Sector Size Reported Physical
Sector Size Windows Version with
Support
512-byte Native, 512n 512 bytes 512 bytes All Linux versions
Advanced Format, AF,
512e, 512E, 512-byte
Emulation 512 bytes 4096 bytes • RHEL 6.1
• SLES 11 SP2
• Ubuntu 13.10
• Ubuntu 12.04.4
Advance Format
native, AFn, 4K
Native, 4Kn 4096 bytes 4096 bytes • RHEL 6.1
• SLES 11 SP2
• Ubuntu 13.10
• Ubuntu 12.04.4
*Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 supports 4k-sector devices as data disks. 4K-sector boot disks are supported in UEFI mode only
**SUSE Linux Enterprise fully supports 4 KB/sector drives in all conditions and architectures with one exception. The
4KB/sector hard disk drives are not supported as a boot drive on x86_64 systems booting with a legacy BIOS.
3. Why do 512 emulation HDD has performance issue and
potential data integrity risk?
The 512e HDD has 4k bytes physical sector, the internal HDD read and write functions are
performed one physical sector (4k bytes) at a time OR a group of eight logical sectors (512 bytes)
at a time. Since the legacy host performs data transfer at 512 bytes boundary, any of the write data
could start and end at the beginning, in the middle or at the end of the 4k physical sector. When
the data starts or ends in the middle of the physical sector, it is called misaligned data. On