[Discuss] Advanced Format hard drives

[Tom Metro]

I see the latest Western Digital notebook drives use Advanced Format[1],
which means they use 4,096-byte sectors instead of the usual 512-byte
sectors. Apparently this requires using a fairly recent Linux kernel[2].
(But not exactly cutting-edge. An Ubuntu 9.10 system will have a kernel
new enough to provide minimal support.)

Though even an older kernel will work, if you take care to manually
align your partitions. I gather the worse case scenario is that you
suffer diminished performance from the drive if the boundaries are
misaligned.

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_format
2.
http://wdc.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/5655/~/how-to-install-a-wd-advanced-format-drive-on-a-non-windows-operating-system


Anyone ran into problems using such a drive with Linux? Enough so that
you'd avoid such drives?

 -Tom

-- 
Tom Metro
Venture Logic, Newton, MA, USA
"Enterprise solutions through open source."
Professional Profile: http://tmetro.venturelogic.com/