4K sector hdd on older controller

[VJ]

Hello,

I'm looking to expand some storage and wondered if it is possible to connect a 2 TB hdd (using 4K sectors) on an older sata raid controller (Promise SX4300). Promise says it is untested, but the technical support guy says he assumes it to work.

If not, what is the largest size hdd that is possible without 4K sectors? Is it 1.5 TB?

Thanks!

Jörg

[Evildead666]

I thought 2TB was the max for non-4k clusters.

Its 2.2TB and above that have the problem, and even then, the only problem is that you need an UEFI bios to boot from it, and windows 7. (don't think vista will do it, XP won't)

The problem you will be having, is how big a drive can you put on the Promise controller.
I think I had a promise raid controller, and it wouldn't take larger than 500GB or something per drive. I had my 4x1TB drives back then. I had lots of problems.
Went to a highpoint rocketraid, which should have been fine upto 2GB drives, had i kept it.

[VJ]

It takes a 1 TB disk (Samsung), this I have tried... I suspect the 1.5 TB of Samsung also don't use 4K sectors, but for instance 1 TB disks by WD do use them... I don't intend to boot from it. So currently I'm eyeing the 1.5 TB Samsungs.

[Evildead666]

Some disks are 4K cluster, they are not all 4K cluster.
WD have 512b cluster drives all the way up to 2TB.
They also have 4K versions.
You have to be careful when you buy, thats all. The model name should differntiate between the 512b and 4K cluster drives, but iirc some of the manufacturers don't have any different markings.

The only problem I ran into on the controller was disk size. If it can take a 1TB drive, you might try it with a 2TB drive, if you can either borrow one, or buy it and return it if it doesn't work.

edit: or do a google search for "Promise SX4300 2TB" and see what comes up, someone might have already tried it

[VJ]

I tried Google, but it was not a very popular controller (PCI-X bus)...
Thanks for telling there might be 2 TB drives out there that could work... I'll have to be very thorough in reading the spec sheets....

[UtwigMU]

Generally it's no difference if controller can see 2TB disk as 4k sector disks use 512b sector emulation. You may need to flash firmware, I saw one Silicon image that required newer firmware to see 1TB HDD. The problem was that it was onboard and latest Abit BIOS didn't have latest Silicon image firmware so I had to hack BIOS with newer firmware and flash the board with it.

The issue is with creating partitions as XP and 2003 (and variants thereoff: XP-64, SBS, WHS) will by default create partitions with off-set of 31.5kB or at 63 sectors which is not aligned.

You can get around by creating partitions manually using diskpart or jumpering the drive (if you'll use only single partition). You can also align them latter-on. If you plan to use dynamic disks, the problem is Windows will start 2nd disk at 63th sector even if the first disk is aligned properly. Since Paragon and Acronis based tools canot align dynamic disks you have to jumper drives and use one single big partition or create first partitions that have number of sectors divisible by 8 (so that next partition starts aligned).

Jumpering drives starts sectors at +1 so partitions start at 64 instead of 63 and stay aligned. Windows 7 starts disks at 1024kb offset and creates 4k aligned partitions.

Helpfulf commands for creating, checking alignment of partitions are:
diskpart
wmic partition get BlockSize, StartingOffset, Name, Index
dmdiag -v (for dynamic disks)

Very helpful article: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/libr...QL.100%29.aspx

Ony my SBS 2k3 I need C and D partitions (system and exchange) so I needed to create aligned partitions. I wanted RAID1 (dynamic disks) so I had to mess with jumpering drives and manually creating 2nd partition at offset which has sectors - 63 divisible by 8 and then filling in with first partition. I then restored from backup, added 2nd drive and created dynamic RAID1 which made the 2nd drive with same offsets.

[VJ]

UtwigMU: It is a raid controller that is considered end-of-life by Promise. The last firmware came out maybe 3 years ago or so. As it is a hardware raid controller (and I want to keep using it as such), I need to create partitions on the controller (either in its bios or through its software interface). So if it will not allow that, it is also a problem. Consequently, I'd rather not take my chances and opt for non 4K sector disks...

Jörg

[Technoid]

The thing to remember here is that the disaligment causes slowdowns NOT dysfunction!

Controllers being able to "see" and controll drives larger than "some" amount of size is controller specifik (not if they are 4k or 512 since they all use emulation to the controller as UtvigMU already said).

Not being able to boot 2tb+ disks with winxp and older is a MBR issue (absolutely not bios, or controller)combined with windows earlier than Vista not recognising GPT!

in essence here: as long as the drive is only 2tb and it is suported by your controller the worst thing that can happen is that the drive will be slower on win xp and earlier than on vista or win7.

[VJ]

I'm guessing the fact that it is a hardware raid controller will obfuscate the 4K sector thing for the OS above...? If so, then it means I will take this performance hit regardless of the OS.

I'm quite confident that larger harddisks will work; there is a 1 TB disk in it. Currently config is 4x400GB (raid5) +1x1TB (jbod). The easiest and surest thing do to would be to get more of that type of 1 TB disks... 4x 1 TB in raid5 will give me 3 TB, and the 400 GB disk I'd use as backups...

[Technoid]

Actually the 4k sector thing is ALWAYS (well untill they releases drives that do not talk 512b sectors with the controller) "hidden" to the os. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Format

Vista and Windows 7 is 4k sector compatible with an hdd that speaks 4k with the os (wich the current ones don't)

That vista and win7 usually aligns the partitions better with the 4k sectors comes from that the software bits that does partitioning was rewritten to work with gpt etc etc (can't find the source for this so I'm probably wrong, google isnt friendly with me atm )

note: I'm not advocation you to get 4k disks, if you can get 512b ones, go for it

I just want to define the issues since someone might find this page from google and most forum posts about 4k drives are consistently confused about it