Re: [Freedos-user] Large drives with 4k sectors presenting as 512b?
One of the key things I'm thinking about is, independent of total space on the drive, it looks like physical sector sizes larger than 512b may be all that is available at some point in the not too distant future. Of course the drives will continue to appear as 512b to OSs/apps that don't know how to check for the underlying physical sector size. The problem is that there can be very significant performance penalties to treating a disk with physical sector sizes of 4k as if they are 512b due to potential read/modify/write actions needed when write operations cross physical sector boundaries. Reads can also see a hit if they are unnecessarily crossing those boundaries as well. Making sure to partition on 4k boundaries certainly is critical, but does not in itself fix the underlying issue. Not that I'm calling for a ground-up re-write of the OS, just wondering what people have planned when actual 512b physical sector disks become unavailable. -- Xperia(TM) PLAY It's a major breakthrough. An authentic gaming smartphone on the nation's most reliable network. And it wants your games. http://p.sf.net/sfu/verizon-sfdev ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] How to install kernel XXXX?
In fact there is appinfo directory with fdkernel.lsm packaged within those zips. So, I believe, there is a way to actually install it with fdupdate. But as for me, it is much more straightforward to just unzip\overwrite. As for ISO editor it depends on OS you're using. For building ISOs in DOS you can use mkisofs from cdrtools. For Linux there is AcetoneISO and ISO Master. For Windows there is tons of ISO editing soft, from crappy ones to power-tools like UltraISO or MagicISO. While most of it will cost you some money, there is still few freeware ones, most notable: AVS Disc Creator (http://www.avs4you.com/avs-disc-creator.aspx), Visual-ISO (http://dpaehl.dd6338.kasserver.com/cdr/visualiso.php) and of course CDmage (http://cdmage.orconhosting.net.nz/frames.html) On 08.04.11 18:25, STF wrote: OK, thanks. I see, so install the kernel is just actually simply replace the kernel.sys file. He could have said this in simple words. I'm just using the official live CD provided in the website. What ISO editor do you advise? TIA On Thu, Apr 7, 2011 at 20:50, escape esc...@front.ru wrote: Hello Unfortunately links on official FreeDOS site are broken. But you still can download from ibiblio. You can find all available kernels at http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/dos/kernel/ . Direct links for 2038 is http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/dos/kernel/2038/kernel2038-fat16-binary.zip or http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/dos/kernel/2038/kernel2038-fat32-binary.zip . After downloading unzip the archive and copy just unzipped kernel.sys to the root directory of C: (or corresponding letter of your system partition) overwriting old one. -- Xperia(TM) PLAY It's a major breakthrough. An authentic gaming smartphone on the nation's most reliable network. And it wants your games. http://p.sf.net/sfu/verizon-sfdev ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user -- Xperia(TM) PLAY It's a major breakthrough. An authentic gaming smartphone on the nation's most reliable network. And it wants your games. http://p.sf.net/sfu/verizon-sfdev ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Large drives with 4k sectors presenting as 512b?
Vote with your wallet. I'm personally not buying any 4k drives nor for myself nor for companies I'm working for. When you need more than 2Tb of space you always can add another 2Tb drive instead of replacing old drive with bigger (3Tb) one. On 10.04.11 10:10, Scott wrote: One of the key things I'm thinking about is, independent of total space on the drive, it looks like physical sector sizes larger than 512b may be all that is available at some point in the not too distant future. Of course the drives will continue to appear as 512b to OSs/apps that don't know how to check for the underlying physical sector size. The problem is that there can be very significant performance penalties to treating a disk with physical sector sizes of 4k as if they are 512b due to potential read/modify/write actions needed when write operations cross physical sector boundaries. Reads can also see a hit if they are unnecessarily crossing those boundaries as well. Making sure to partition on 4k boundaries certainly is critical, but does not in itself fix the underlying issue. Not that I'm calling for a ground-up re-write of the OS, just wondering what people have planned when actual 512b physical sector disks become unavailable. -- Xperia(TM) PLAY It's a major breakthrough. An authentic gaming smartphone on the nation's most reliable network. And it wants your games. http://p.sf.net/sfu/verizon-sfdev ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user -- Xperia(TM) PLAY It's a major breakthrough. An authentic gaming smartphone on the nation's most reliable network. And it wants your games. http://p.sf.net/sfu/verizon-sfdev ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Large drives with 4k sectors presenting as 512b?
On 4/10/2011 5:20 AM, escape wrote: Vote with your wallet. I'm personally not buying any 4k drives nor for myself nor for companies I'm working for. When you need more than 2Tb of space you always can add another 2Tb drive instead of replacing old drive with bigger (3Tb) one. I think that is a short term solution. Eventually all new drives are going to have 4KB sectors because it is easier to ship a standard product. 5 to 10 years down the road 512 byte sectors will be a legacy OS issue. Look at vintage computers as an example. I use DOS because that's what my favorite, vintage machines support. But finding old MFM hard drives that still work is getting harder and harder as the years go on. Eventually people decided it was time to find a more modern alternative, and we wound up designing and creating an 8 bit IDE card that can use LBA addressing. That lets us put the larger (newer) IDE drives in systems that were never designed for it. In a few years we're going to have to think about alternatives as the IDE drives die out. FreeDOS will have to do the same. Or you'll be stuck with antique hardware, or running in a virtual environment instead. (Which isn't all that bad.) Performance isn't much of an issue - if you really need the latest and greatest in performance, you are probably not running single threaded DOS apps. :-) Mike -- Xperia(TM) PLAY It's a major breakthrough. An authentic gaming smartphone on the nation's most reliable network. And it wants your games. http://p.sf.net/sfu/verizon-sfdev ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Large drives with 4k sectors presenting as 512b?
Please get it right. I'm not arguing against support of new technologies. But now it's often when manufacturers trying to disguise cost cutting and marketing rubbish as prominent new technology. Look at monitors as an example. Getting 16:10 aspect along with 4:3 was not a bad idea. While for some tasks 4:3 was better, 16:10 was better for others. But now 4:3 almost completely disappeared and 16:10 are quietly supplanted by 16:9. And with 16:9 aspect you plainly get less resolution (and thus less information displayed) for given diagonal and money compared to 16:10. Hey! They intended for watching movies! But was Casablanca or The Maltese Falcon shot in 16:9? If not count for tons of potentially broken legacy software, 4k sector is not a bad idea alone. But it became actual just now because manufacturers lacks other real technologies for holding more user data on same size platters. And 5 to 10 years down the road not only 512 byte sectors, but whole idea of precision mechanics that spins and wiggles to remember something may look slightly outdated. In fact it is already looking so about few years, but for the moment we (of course manufacturers at the first place), don't have any better solution than to increase sector size. On 10.04.11 17:43, Michael B. Brutman wrote: On 4/10/2011 5:20 AM, escape wrote: Vote with your wallet. I'm personally not buying any 4k drives nor for myself nor for companies I'm working for. When you need more than 2Tb of space you always can add another 2Tb drive instead of replacing old drive with bigger (3Tb) one. I think that is a short term solution. Eventually all new drives are going to have 4KB sectors because it is easier to ship a standard product. 5 to 10 years down the road 512 byte sectors will be a legacy OS issue. Look at vintage computers as an example. I use DOS because that's what my favorite, vintage machines support. But finding old MFM hard drives that still work is getting harder and harder as the years go on. Eventually people decided it was time to find a more modern alternative, and we wound up designing and creating an 8 bit IDE card that can use LBA addressing. That lets us put the larger (newer) IDE drives in systems that were never designed for it. In a few years we're going to have to think about alternatives as the IDE drives die out. FreeDOS will have to do the same. Or you'll be stuck with antique hardware, or running in a virtual environment instead. (Which isn't all that bad.) Performance isn't much of an issue - if you really need the latest and greatest in performance, you are probably not running single threaded DOS apps. :-) Mike -- Xperia(TM) PLAY It's a major breakthrough. An authentic gaming smartphone on the nation's most reliable network. And it wants your games. http://p.sf.net/sfu/verizon-sfdev ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user -- Xperia(TM) PLAY It's a major breakthrough. An authentic gaming smartphone on the nation's most reliable network. And it wants your games. http://p.sf.net/sfu/verizon-sfdev ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Large drives with 4k sectors presenting as 512b?
On 4/10/2011 12:08 PM, escape wrote: Please get it right. I'm not arguing against support of new technologies. But now it's often when manufacturers trying to disguise cost cutting and marketing rubbish as prominent new technology. Look at monitors as an example. Getting 16:10 aspect along with 4:3 was not a bad idea. While for some tasks 4:3 was better, 16:10 was better for others. But now 4:3 almost completely disappeared and 16:10 are quietly supplanted by 16:9. And with 16:9 aspect you plainly get less resolution (and thus less information displayed) for given diagonal and money compared to 16:10. Hey! They intended for watching movies! But was Casablanca or The Maltese Falcon shot in 16:9? If not count for tons of potentially broken legacy software, 4k sector is not a bad idea alone. But it became actual just now because manufacturers lacks other real technologies for holding more user data on same size platters. And 5 to 10 years down the road not only 512 byte sectors, but whole idea of precision mechanics that spins and wiggles to remember something may look slightly outdated. In fact it is already looking so about few years, but for the moment we (of course manufacturers at the first place), don't have any better solution than to increase sector size. I don't think I misread you. But the market is geared to the current problems, not the past problems. For some strange reason people like widescreen monitors even though most of our reading would benefit from portrait monitors. The current problem in the hard drive industry is that 4KB sectors are more efficient for data storage because of the nature of error correcting codes. The answer to broken legacy software will be more software that emulates what we need, or directly supports the newer hardware available. We either get frozen in time, or adapt. (For my vintage machines I stockpile a lot of parts that can't be made again, and where I can I adapt.) Mike -- Xperia(TM) PLAY It's a major breakthrough. An authentic gaming smartphone on the nation's most reliable network. And it wants your games. http://p.sf.net/sfu/verizon-sfdev ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Large drives with 4k sectors presenting as 512b?
On 10.04.11 20:51, Michael B. Brutman wrote: I don't think I misread you. But the market is geared to the current problems, not the past problems. For some strange reason people like widescreen monitors even though most of our reading would benefit from portrait monitors. I'm agree with you, except that market is not geared to the problems. Nor past nor current. Market is geared exclusively to the profit. So while at past there was huge risks of making incompatible and thus poorly sold product, now it's cheaper to resize sectors than research magnetic recording technologies, because all current versions of major OSes support 4k sector size. The current problem in the hard drive industry is that 4KB sectors are more efficient for data storage because of the nature of error correcting codes. As I sad before 4k sector is not a bad idea alone, because all current file systems have allocation unit size of 4k or even more. And of course it's more efficient to store just one piece of error correcting codes per 4K than for every 512 bytes. But on the other hand, stronger error correction algorithms used more space for error correcting codes and format efficiency gains resulting from the 4K sector structure range from five to thirteen percent only. So while it might be considered as a logical step forward, it is definitely not a silver bullet in storage space advancement. -- Xperia(TM) PLAY It's a major breakthrough. An authentic gaming smartphone on the nation's most reliable network. And it wants your games. http://p.sf.net/sfu/verizon-sfdev ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Large drives with 4k sectors presenting as 512b?
I shall add my two-cents worth to the current philosophical discussion about 4K sectors as follows -- To me, the most disturbing thing about modern PC systems is their ABSOLUTE LACK of concern for backward compatibility! We really did NOT need the PCI bus in 1994, except that Intel wanted to sell PCI chips and thus found ways to discredit and force out-of-business the VESA bus. We really did NOT need PCI-X video cards in the past 5 years, except that somebody [guess who!] desired to sell THOSE chips too, and so found ways to discredit and force out-of-business AGP video cards. We really did NOT need AHCI controllers and all the MONSTROUS software drivers needed with them, except that the industry again desired us all to buy something new and thus increase the profits in Santa Clara, CA and Redmond, WA. I still say a properly-written SATA/IDE driver, without any terribly SLOW C interrupt logic [maybe using an old-friend of mine called Horror of Horrors ASSEMBLY code!], probably COULD have done a much faster job of hard disk I-O in Windows/Linux! How do I say this?? Because in 2008, when I asked Lucho about UIDE speed v.s. Windows, he replied You beat THEM, 2 months ago! Finally, we really do NOT need mainboard makers [all from one island in the South China Sea] who support their products for only a few months, then DROP all such support when their NEXT Piece of S*** is ready to be stuffed down our throats! And now we have 4K sectors for hard-disk drives, which I note some feel shall ultimately replace 512-byte sectors. If so, another step BACKWARD in terms of user friendliness for the poor-old PC industry.Even the AHCI A**holes still provide some sort of legacy or IDE compatible mode, for most BIOS chips and with most mainboards! If 4K and ONLY 4K sectors ever happens, I might just begin cheering for IPads and other alternatives, then Sit back and watch! the PC industry lose ALL its business, just like IBM lost control of PCs in 1985!! In the name of progress like the Wintel Consortium tries to make us all believe, the PC industry simply CANNOT get rid of an I-O format with 30 years of history behind it (or 50+ when one includes mainframes/minicomputers!) and all that software expecting to USE such a format! If hard-disk firmware has become so good that it can allow 64-MB on-board write caches, then I hope they might ALSO realize it is more in their best interest to continue handling 512-byte sectors, however they can, and even in-parallel with handling 4K sectors if needed! I say again: My own UIDE driver (A) shall NOT include direct support for AHCI, due to the code-size needed and as legacy IDE handling is part of most AHCI chipsets, and (B) shall NOT include direct support for 4K hard-disk sectors, since no DOS system now supports them as well (nor likely ever will)! If the PC industry ever tries making this mandatory, like they did in Ramming down our throats! such things as PCI, PCI-X, and now God-DAMNED AHCI, I plan to PITCH my entire PC system, then go into full retirement [or perhaps get an IPad or some- thing else, ANYTHING else but another damned PC, instead]! Jack R. Ellis -- Xperia(TM) PLAY It's a major breakthrough. An authentic gaming smartphone on the nation's most reliable network. And it wants your games. http://p.sf.net/sfu/verizon-sfdev ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Large drives with 4k sectors presenting as 512b?
Jack, I love a good rant as much as anybody, but some context is needed. PCI was desperately needed by server class hardware. The ISA bus and the extensions to the ISA bus were failing for several reasons: - Inability to share interrupt lines - Three fragmented standards (ISA, VL, and EISA) - Inconsistent handling of high memory accessing - Limited DMA channels - Too specific to PC architecture - Configuration and init code was polluting the PC address map. Thank heavens we finally got a real bus. PCI Express (I'm assuming you meant this, not PCI-X) is mostly compatible with PCI at the software level. The reason for PCI-Express was the need to reduce pin count and move to what is basically a serial interface, similiar to the transition the industry made when it went from the PATA to the SATA interface. It's an engineering solution to get better speed, which most people want. The move to 4K sector sizes has very good technical reasons behind it. It's not the end of the world. -- Xperia(TM) PLAY It's a major breakthrough. An authentic gaming smartphone on the nation's most reliable network. And it wants your games. http://p.sf.net/sfu/verizon-sfdev ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Large drives with 4k sectors presenting as 512b?
Consumers (home and business) for the most part buy the bulk of their storage on $/GB type of decisions. Buying multiple lower capacity HDDs does not meet this model. The 2.5 and 3.5 form factors are such an embedded standard that making your drives a different size to get more platter area is not realistic. Getting greater effective areal density means either more technology in the R/W heads and platter, or more efficient use of the existing space. Increasing the areal density through technology, while obviously a continuing focus of HDD companies, is getting prohibitively more expensive with each small advance due to real limitations of physics. That takes us back to more efficient use of the space, and that is what 4k sectors gets us. http://www.anandtech.com/Show/Index/2888 One estimate for 4K sector technology puts this at 100 bytes of ECC data needed for a 4K sector, versus 320 (40x8) for 8 512B sectors. Furthermore the larger sectors means that larger erroneous chunks of data can be corrected (burst error correction), something that was becoming harder as greater areal densities made it easier to wipe out larger parts of a 512B sector. As a result, the need for the larger sector is born. On 4/10/11 1:59 PM, Michael B. Brutman wrote: The move to 4K sector sizes has very good technical reasons behind it. It's not the end of the world. -- Xperia(TM) PLAY It's a major breakthrough. An authentic gaming smartphone on the nation's most reliable network. And it wants your games. http://p.sf.net/sfu/verizon-sfdev ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Large drives with 4k sectors presenting as 512b?
Michael, You missed my point about backward compatibility, which has been notoriously ABSENT from the historical events I noted. PCI was desperately needed by server class hardware ... Fine, let them have it. But why did ORDINARY users have to be forced into buying newer mainboards, which ONLY had PCI??!! I still use a system with 1 hard-disk, 1 CD/DVD drive, 1 diskette (remember them?) and 1 serial-port modem -- NO damned USB, Fire Wire, nor other modern GARBAGE needed or wanted!Why in HELL do I really need PCI, with my configuration??ISA would have gone on serving me, and others, very well, but it disappeared after 1994. Need I tell you due to guess-WHO's desire to SELL CHIPS??!! Thank heavens we finally got a real bus. A REAL BUS, you say?? If so, then explain to me why, on so many Intel-based systems, there are so many PCI BRIDGES!! If it were a real bus, there would be only ONE bus, NOT so many bridges to yet-another set of wires for God-Knows-What! My guess is that only adds cost and complexity, which an ordinary user like me might hope to AVOID! PCI Express (I'm assuming you meant this, not PCI-X) is mostly compatible with PCI at the software level. The reason for PCI Express was the need to reduce pin count and move to what is basically a serial interface ... So why not simply (A) omit using the pins they didn't need, and (B) specify a currently-UNUSED pin [must have been at least one of them on an AGP card!] for what is basically a serial inter- face? And same as above, if a few play-games FREAKS really NEEDED so much video speed, let THEM get new video cards. But instead, guess who drove AGP and all mainboards which had AGP sockets out-of-business, and we ALL need to buy new video cards and new mainboards designed for them! ABSOLUTELY NO backward- compatibility, again, though many people like me DON'T NEED any damned PCI Express or whatever it may be called! I still get by quite well with only my GeForce-2 AGP card, bought in 1999! And I bet there are likely many others, like me, who Dread the Day when they are STUCK buying a new video card, since AGP has effectively disappeared now! The move to 4K sector sizes has very good technical reasons behind it ... To which I might ALSO say an 8-letter word beginning with BULL! I have written actual firmware, and I have friends that wrote actual HARD-disk firmware.Along with every improvement to hard-disk speed has come ever-faster firmware processing chips, faster on-board memory, and of course better algorithms for USE of all that. So why can't such an ever-faster industry such as hard disks continue to process 512-byte sectors even faster, as well? Does the REST of the PC industry really need to help THEM, with all of their super sophisticated on-board hardware?? Or, in fact, could this maybe [... just MAYBE!] be another case of the Wintel Consortium software BRATS being UNABLE to achieve their targets, using only their college-professors' and bosses' much-beloved C, and it is actually THOSE brats who are asking for such help?? That, in fact, is what all this begins to sound like, to me!! -- Xperia(TM) PLAY It's a major breakthrough. An authentic gaming smartphone on the nation's most reliable network. And it wants your games. http://p.sf.net/sfu/verizon-sfdev ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Large drives with 4k sectors presenting as 512b?
2011/4/10, Jack: Or, in fact, could this maybe [... just MAYBE!] be another case of the Wintel Consortium software BRATS being UNABLE to achieve their targets, using only their college-professors' and bosses' much-beloved C, and it is actually THOSE brats who are asking for such help?? This reminds me somewhat a Forth's Dillemma rant: #v+ My own life-experiences with such a Great Firm was with Bell Laboratories, part of ATT at the time. [..] For 20 years, I believed in these objectives for excellence in engineering, always assuming that it was for the benefit of our customers and therefor of interest to management. Until one day, when talking to a department head (a friend) about my design objectives and why some of upper management seem to dislike me for it, he pulled me into his office, for privacy, and told me the secret. The users of our phones and long-distance services are not our customers, the regulatory agencies of the government are. ATT gets a fixed profit margin on any new equipment they install, the more it costs to manufacture, the higher our profits! Striving all the time for excellence in engineering, getting 12 patents for ATT, and finally learning it was not a desirable goal for my management. #v- http://www.msmisp.com/futuretest/Forth's_Dilemma.htm -- regards, Zbigniew -- Xperia(TM) PLAY It's a major breakthrough. An authentic gaming smartphone on the nation's most reliable network. And it wants your games. http://p.sf.net/sfu/verizon-sfdev ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Large drives with 4k sectors presenting as 512b?
On Sun, Apr 10, 2011 at 11:55 PM, Jack gykazequ...@earthlink.net wrote: A REAL BUS, you say?? If so, then explain to me why, on so many Intel-based systems, there are so many PCI BRIDGES!! If it were a real bus, there would be only ONE bus, NOT so many bridges to yet-another set of wires for God-Knows-What! My guess is that only adds cost and complexity, which an ordinary user like me might hope to AVOID! No, you are wrong. PCI is a real bus and a real bus needs at bridge to decouple the bus frequency from the core frequency. That was the main failure of the VL-bus that it was hooked directly to the CPU base-frequency. Horrible poor design. Also PCI introduced the the PCI ID number so we poor souls had a chance to identify the hardware. The ISA days were horrible and should just be forgotten. However I agree that the PC/x86 design is a POS in the first place, but DOS depends 100% on it (and that's why most of us use Linux today). -- Xperia(TM) PLAY It's a major breakthrough. An authentic gaming smartphone on the nation's most reliable network. And it wants your games. http://p.sf.net/sfu/verizon-sfdev ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Large drives with 4k sectors presenting as 512b?
On 2011/04/10 14:55 (GMT-0700) Scott composed: more efficient use of the space, and that is what 4k sectors gets us. http://www.anandtech.com/Show/Index/2888 One estimate for 4K sector technology puts this at 100 bytes of ECC data needed for a 4K sector, versus 320 (40x8) for 8 512B sectors. Furthermore the larger sectors means that larger erroneous chunks of data can be corrected (burst error correction), something that was becoming harder as greater areal densities made it easier to wipe out larger parts of a 512B sector. As a result, the need for the larger sector is born. How does this work out for the many small files usage model? Instead of the 256 bytes/file waste that wasn't so bad, with 4k sectors we get to waste 3840 bytes/file, or 15 times the actual data size instead of just double, not counting ECC savings. -- The wise are known for their understanding, and pleasant words are persuasive. Proverbs 16:21 (New Living Translation) Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 ** a11y rocks! Felix Miata *** http://fm.no-ip.com/ -- Xperia(TM) PLAY It's a major breakthrough. An authentic gaming smartphone on the nation's most reliable network. And it wants your games. http://p.sf.net/sfu/verizon-sfdev ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Large drives with 4k sectors presenting as 512b?
Scott, Consumers (home and business) for the most part buy the bulk of their storage on $/GB type of decisions. Buying multiple lower capacity HDDs does not meet this model. A lot of Internet vendor websites, such as NewEgg, just may prove you wrong. Every time I look at NewEgg and others, the latest- and-greatest hard disk has a price premium far WORSE than buying 2 hard disks of 1/2 the size. http://www.anandtech.com/Show/Index/2888 One estimate for 4K sector technology puts this at 100 bytes of ECC data needed for a 4K sector, versus 320 (40x8) for 8 512B sectors. Furthermore the larger sectors means that larger erroneous chunks of data can be corrected (burst error correction), something that was becoming harder as greater areal densities made it easier to wipe out larger parts of a 512B sector. As a result, the need for the larger sector is born. Absolutely UNBELIEVABLE!! 40-byte ECCs needed for 512-byte sectors?? From 1976-1978 I worked for a company that made hard-disk controllers, used on PDP-11 systems to control 80- to 300-MB washing machine size disk drives, all they had 35 years ago. Our controller used a 56-bit ECC, i.e. 7 bytes, to detect all errors and correct bursts of up to 11 bits. 35 years ago, PDP-11 drivers (I wrote them, too) did not have, and didn't need, any better error-correction than that, since the disk drives WORKED! Nor (that I know of) were there spare sectors, etc. Now, any modern 3.5 hard-disk has spare sector tracks, and as the above article notes, they also have 40-bit ECCs to correct larger er- roneous chunks of data. If so, and if all that is really NEEDED for so-called modern hard-disks, I say only this: WHAT WENT WRONG, from 35 years ago, when such things WERE NOT needed??!! Given spare sector pools and the firmware to use them, I expect that modern hard-disks should be able to get-by with only a 10-bit, maybe at-most a 16-bit, ECC. Uncorrectable errors beyond the ECC's ability should cause the drive to use a spare sector.And finally, if too many spare sectors get used, someone at that vendor should inspect their manufacturing processes for disk platters, and FIX IT! Sad, to me, that so much in electornics/computers is now pushed past a very simple concept that was taught to me long ago, which is known as DIMINISHING RETURNS!! Given my experience, the need for a 40-byte ECC with only a 512-byte disk sector is WELL PAST diminishing returns! And if that is any reason for advocating 4K disk sectors, i.e. to save such miniscule amounts of track space, the hard-disk industry is now DUMBER than I thought!! [Paul Newman, from the 1989 movie Blaze]. Jack R. Ellis -- Xperia(TM) PLAY It's a major breakthrough. An authentic gaming smartphone on the nation's most reliable network. And it wants your games. http://p.sf.net/sfu/verizon-sfdev ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Large drives with 4k sectors presenting as 512b?
Scott, My apologies (age 65 again!); in my last post about disk ECC sizes, I meant to say 10 byte and 16 byte ECCs, not bit. Jack R. Ellis -- Xperia(TM) PLAY It's a major breakthrough. An authentic gaming smartphone on the nation's most reliable network. And it wants your games. http://p.sf.net/sfu/verizon-sfdev ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Large drives with 4k sectors presenting as 512b?
Zbigniew, This reminds me somewhat a Forth's Dillemma rant: ... Which I read, and I do not regard it as any rant but a statement of fact, especially as I suffered the same -- In 1968, when I still did 360/DOS mainframe work, IBM added job-stack capability for the DOS foreground-1 and -2 tasks, but they FORGOT most systems had only one card-reader to do job-stack input! Capturing F1 and F2 job-stacks to tape or disk was also impossible, as reading past a / card (end of job) was an ERROR that canned all cards until the next / appeared. So, I read the assembled DOS kernel listing, noted the bits set by a / card, and wrote a B-Transient to CLEAR the bits until a / card (end of stack) was read.Worked fine, F1 and F2 got a lot more work done, and our nightshift girl got home 2 hours earlier every night. The upshot? 3 weeks later, my boss called me in and asked me to be more discreet about any further changes I did to the 360/DOS system. I asked why, and he replied Our S.E. [systems-engineer i.e. repairman] heard about it, and now they want to re-negotiate our MAINTENANCE contract!. Within 3 months, and through absolutely NO fault of my boss or that company, I had my first job in mini-computers. My opinion was that, if IBM thought only THEIR people at White Plains, NY could do systems-programming, and everybody else in the field ought NOT, then I did NOT need my destiny to be controlled by those a**holes! And I made that decision at only age 23! Your Forth's Dilemma is not any sort of rant but really a statement of fact. I know, since I have BEEN there and DONE that!, as we in the U.S.A. might say. Jack R. Ellis -- Xperia(TM) PLAY It's a major breakthrough. An authentic gaming smartphone on the nation's most reliable network. And it wants your games. http://p.sf.net/sfu/verizon-sfdev ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Large drives with 4k sectors presenting as 512b?
2011/4/10, Jack gykazequ...@earthlink.net: Your Forth's Dilemma is not any sort of rant but really a statement of fact. I know, since I have BEEN there and DONE that!, as we in the U.S.A. might say. Well, actually it's not mine - but I've found it interesting, and (as I wrote) your opinion brought it back to my mind. Yes, maybe rant was wrong term indeed (be tolerant to non-native speaker ;) - since it was rather memories, and an attempt to make a diagnosis of the situation in computer industry. -- regards, Zbigniew -- Xperia(TM) PLAY It's a major breakthrough. An authentic gaming smartphone on the nation's most reliable network. And it wants your games. http://p.sf.net/sfu/verizon-sfdev ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Large drives with 4k sectors presenting as 512b?
Zbigniew, Your Forth's Dilemma is not any sort of rant but really a statement of fact. I know, since I have BEEN there and DONE that!, as we in the U.S.A. might say. Well, actually it's not mine - but I've found it interesting, and (as I wrote) your opinion brought it back to my mind. Yes, maybe rant was wrong term indeed (be tolerant to non-native speaker ;) - since it was rather memories, and an attempt to make a diagnosis of the situation in computer industry. On that diagnosis, I absolutely agree with you. In the U.S. we have a 2-word phrase that in my opinion perfectly describes the current PC industry situation -- It SUCKS!! Jack R. Ellis -- Xperia(TM) PLAY It's a major breakthrough. An authentic gaming smartphone on the nation's most reliable network. And it wants your games. http://p.sf.net/sfu/verizon-sfdev ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Large drives with 4k sectors presenting as 512b?
On 4/10/11 3:56 PM, Jack wrote: A lot of Internet vendor websites, such as NewEgg, just may prove you wrong. Every time I look at NewEgg and others, the latest- and-greatest hard disk has a price premium far WORSE than buying 2 hard disks of 1/2 the size. Most people don't buy the latest and greatest, the thing to compare is the commodity disk prices, not the cutting edge. Going with your newegg example, and picking 1 2TB 3.5 drives: 0.5TB - Hitachi Seagate WD $40, Samsung $50 1TB - Hatachi $55, Samsung $60, Seagate WD $65 2TB - Samsung Hitachi $80, WD Seagate $90 http://www.anandtech.com/Show/Index/2888 One estimate for 4K sector technology puts this at 100 bytes of ECC data needed for a 4K sector, versus 320 (40x8) for 8 512B sectors. Furthermore the larger sectors means that larger erroneous chunks of data can be corrected (burst error correction), something that was becoming harder as greater areal densities made it easier to wipe out larger parts of a 512B sector. As a result, the need for the larger sector is born. Absolutely UNBELIEVABLE!! 40-byte ECCs needed for 512-byte sectors?? From 1976-1978 I worked for a company that made hard-disk controllers, used on PDP-11 systems to control 80- to 300-MB washing machine size disk drives, all they had 35 years ago. Our controller used a 56-bit ECC, i.e. 7 bytes, to detect all errors and correct bursts of up to 11 bits. 35 years ago, PDP-11 drivers (I wrote them, too) did not have, and didn't need, any better error-correction than that, since the disk drives WORKED! Nor (that I know of) were there spare sectors, etc. Maybe I'm missing something here, but... (AND BIG DISCLAIMER - I did quick Googling with even quicker Google calc to get the #s below, I may have made very significant math errors) The earliest spinning disks had an areal density of around 2kb/sq. in, the current drives are around 500Gb/sq. in. That means that the size of one bit on the earliest disks was 262,144,000 times as large as a bit on a modern disk. So yes, when looking at a space that is 262 Million times larger, there is a lot more room for error than modern disks, thus a need for much larger ECCs. So, on the original spinning disk a 512b sector consumed 0.256 sq. in. On the newest disks that same sector is about 9.5 × 10-10 sq inches, or 0.024 nanometers. Given that the average virus is around 75nm, one virus particle sized damage to the HDD would take out over 3000 512b sectors, on the original disk it would have taken damage of an area equal to nearly 90,000 virus-particles to wipe out ONE 512b sector. So, I don't see that the large ECC is any indication of a lower quality of drive, it is a natural solution to approaching the physics limitation of magnetic recording. -- Xperia(TM) PLAY It's a major breakthrough. An authentic gaming smartphone on the nation's most reliable network. And it wants your games. http://p.sf.net/sfu/verizon-sfdev ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Large drives with 4k sectors presenting as 512b?
Jack, There are so many inaccuracies and distortions in the reply that you sent, I'm going to assume you are just irritated or in a bad mood. The world moves on ... it doesn't make sense to support existing standards forever. You can have eternal support, or affordable prices, but not both. - Modems have been supplanted by networks thousands of times faster - Screens have more real-estate than ever and can be carried in one hand - Most machines are SMPs on a chip - Hard drives are measured in sizes that used to fill a data center Most of us like this progress. While I do enjoy tinkering with my old hardware, it's not usable for things that most people need to do today. ISA buses were an abomination. Sorry - that's the bottom line. PCI bridges server a valuable purpose - to decouple segments of the extended bus from each other, both for clock speed and management purposes. I hate to shock you even further, but the PCI bus itself has become so standard and ubiquitous that the virtual machines out there like KVM use it as an abstraction layer for defining the hardware of the virtual machine! The move to serial (point to point) links is driven by the physical reality of electrical engineering - it's hard to run signals over parallel wires at high speeds and keep them in sync. You can argue that it's not needed; the people needing to push larger and larger amounts of data through their systems disagree. And as is pointed out already, ECC over a 4K sector size is more efficient space wise than ECC over 512 byte sectors. In an incredibly cost conscious industry you can't leave that kind of space savings on the table. Do you like cheap storage or 512 byte sectors? I think we can live with the 4KB sectors - it's going to cause a performance hit, but on modern hardware we have enough to burn. And on a final note, just because you fail to see the value in something for your own purposes does not mean it is without value, or 'bull'. Calm down a little. You are not the only person on the list to have written firmware or operating systems code. Mike -- Xperia(TM) PLAY It's a major breakthrough. An authentic gaming smartphone on the nation's most reliable network. And it wants your games. http://p.sf.net/sfu/verizon-sfdev ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Large drives with 4k sectors presenting as 512b?
There are so many inaccuracies and distortions in the reply that you sent, I'm going to assume you are just irritated or in a bad mood. In fact, I was neither, until reading what you post below. Once again you choose only to pick nits at the technical examples I mention, but flatly REFUSE to address my ACTUAL point of NO BACKWARD COMPATIBILITY. The world moves on ... it doesn't make sense to support existing standards forever. You can have eternal support, or affordable prices, but not both. What I resent, and have all my time in computers, is that such existing standards are usually supplanted with absolutely NO thought of backward compatibility. We are all FORCED to buy new systems ever 2 or 3 years, whether we like it and have the cash, or NOT, simply because chip makers want to sell us something new. They ARE sales driven as I hope you know, and there are NO sales if people still can find the OLD equipment! - Modems have been supplanted by networks thousands of times faster - Screens have more real-estate than ever and can be carried in one hand - Most machines are SMPs on a chip - Hard drives are measured in sizes that used to fill a data center I still use a 56K modem, still have a 17 CRT monitor, and have a single- core AMD 3000+ that serves me fine. Saves me the every-2-or-3-year cost of buying what OTHERS in the PC industry think I SHOULD buy now! And I hope my equipment will KEEP ON saving me such cost! Most of us like this progress. While I do enjoy tinkering with my old hardware, it's not usable for things that most people need to do today. Mine still is, and I bet most people's hardware still is. Perhaps that is why PC sales took such a HUGE nosedive around 2008. The world economy and a lot of bad banks certainly contributed, but I would not be surprised if many people decided We really do NOT need new hardware now!, and they are still using 5+ year old systems, same as me. ISA buses were an abomination. Sorry - that's the bottom line. Always worked for me, and again, my regret is that someone ELSE flatly TOOK AWAY even the CHANCE for me to continue using one! PCI bridges server a valuable purpose - to decouple segments of the extended bus from each other, both for clock speed and management purposes. If a PCI bridge can do it, why can't an individual DEVICE do it, e.g. look at bus-timings only when they need to read/write DATA on the bus, which is equivalent to decoupling THEMSELVES, without needing a whole bridge chip to be involved?? Last I heard, any bus has a clock, and if a device wants to key off of its OWN clock for certain functions, let it DO so!! I hate to shock you even further, but the PCI bus itself has become so standard and ubiquitous that the virtual machines out there like KVM use it as an abstraction layer for defining the hardware of the virtual machine! Their business, not mine, since I have never used a virtual machine. I would rather have a REAL machine, not another software layer. The move to serial (point to point) links is driven by the physical reality of electrical engineering - it's hard to run signals over parallel wires at high speeds and keep them in sync. You can argue that it's not needed; the people needing to push larger and larger amounts of data through their systems disagree. Fine, let the serial busses exist if they must. But again, NO ONE gave users any CHOICE about keeping our PARALLEL busses, and again we all had to buy new hardware, because the industry DENIED us any more old hardware! And as is pointed out already, ECC over a 4K sector size is more efficient space wise than ECC over 512 byte sectors. In an incredibly cost conscious industry you can't leave that kind of space savings on the table. Do you like cheap storage or 512 byte sectors? I like both. But, you convince me that I need not just a spare floppy- disk, but also a spare hard-disk, too! All your comments convince me the PC industry will GO ON flatly DENYING me or others ANY SORT of back- ward compatibility.So if I am, in fact, totally happy with available disks and don't need 4K-sector types, I had better stock up now!Or just PITCH my PC and accept using an IPad. Appears a lot of people may be doing just that! I think we can live with the 4KB sectors - it's going to cause a per- formance hit, but on modern hardware we have enough to burn. Thank you for yet another reason why I do NOT want 4K sectors, if that is so! Is that how you answer Felix Miata's comment, in this thread, that 4K sectors will cause more last-block file wastage, i.e. We have enough [performance] to BURN?? We NEVER have any such thing, in my opinion!! And on a final note, just because you fail to see the value in something for your own purposes does not mean it is without value, or 'bull'. Calm down a little. You are not the only person on the list to have written firmware or operating systems code. Maybe
Re: [Freedos-user] Large drives with 4k sectors presenting as 512b?
On 11.04.11 00:55, Scott wrote: One estimate for 4K sector technology puts this at 100 bytes of ECC data needed for a 4K sector, versus 320 (40x8) for 8 512B sectors. Yes, that's about 5% (5,37% to be exact) you'll gain from 4k sectors. For 2Tb drive it will be equal to 100Gb of space. The question Is 2,1Tb so more capacious than 2,0Tb that we want to break compatibility? -- Xperia(TM) PLAY It's a major breakthrough. An authentic gaming smartphone on the nation's most reliable network. And it wants your games. http://p.sf.net/sfu/verizon-sfdev ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
