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The Graveyard - Products No Longer Supported => D-Link Storage => DNS-323 => Topic started by: Lajt on February 09, 2010, 10:00:04 AM

Title: DNS-323 and new HDD 64Mb cache
Post by: Lajt on February 09, 2010, 10:00:04 AM

Hi to everybody.
Does anyone know if DNS-323 is compatible with new WD "EARS" HDD-s.

New Caviar green HDD-s come with 64Mb cache and different sector size (4Mb instead of 512kb).
So for older OS-es it is needed to use WD uttillity for aligning.
More on: http://www.wdc.com/en/products/advancedformat/ (http://www.wdc.com/en/products/advancedformat/)

Title: Re: DNS-323 and new HDD 64Mb cache
Post by: Lajt on February 11, 2010, 08:02:16 AM

Hey ppl.
Since nobody knew the answer on my question.
I took a risk and bought new WD 1.5TB HDD with 64MB cache.

1    WDC    WD15EARS    1500 G

Disk was formatted and is working with no problems

Volume Name:    Volume_1
Total Hard Drive Capacity:    1475704 MB

So wish you all good luck.
Signing off, Lajt

Title: Re: DNS-323 and new HDD 64Mb cache
Post by: gunrunnerjohn on February 11, 2010, 08:25:16 AM

Thanks, probably nobody has that drive and the DNS-323 yet. :)

Title: Re: DNS-323 and new HDD 64Mb cache
Post by: gionn on February 17, 2010, 02:09:39 PM

Right    WDC    WD10EARS-00Y5B1    WD-WMAV51765402    1000 G    
Left    WDC    WD10EARS-00Y5B1    WD-WMAV51775110    1000 G

Same here, they works (don't know if fastest as they should).

Title: Re: DNS-323 and new HDD 64Mb cache
Post by: Buhric on February 18, 2010, 05:05:54 AM

is it just me or this 4Mb cluster size is not so great....

I mean, my uinderstanding on how files are store in a hard drive, is that a cluster can only contain 1 file
and 1 file can be stored across multiple clusters....

I mean if a file size is 8Mb it would take 2 clusters on that drive...
but a file that has a file size is less that 4Mb will take 1 cluster....
meanning 100 files of 100Kb would take 100 clusters... thuss 400 Mb of disk space
instead of the 10Mb they should normaly take....

don't beleive me?
Do a right click --> properties on a folder you will see 2 sizes "Size" and "Size on disk"
"Size on disk" will always be bigger thant "Size" and a multiple of the disk cluster size
"Size" is the actual file sizes summed up....

Even further... check the "Size on disk" of an existing folder....
create a 1 byte file... a TXT file with 1 character in it... and recheck the "Size on disk"
it would have gone up by a cluster size...

Title: Re: DNS-323 and new HDD 64Mb cache
Post by: gunrunnerjohn on February 18, 2010, 05:19:46 AM

You are mistaking the physical disk sector size with cluster size.  The "new" WD drives have changed the physical sector size from 512 bytes to 4 kbytes.  The emulation fools the interface into thinking that the sector sizes are still 512 bytes.

This change allows them to store more data on each track, since the sector overhead and gap overhead are repeated fewer times.

Title: Re: DNS-323 and new HDD 64Mb cache
Post by: Buhric on February 18, 2010, 01:34:21 PM

Thanks for clearing that up for me...