Considering all HDDs are formated in the factory to remap those bad sectors as needed, what good does it do to redo it at home? It's not like 20 years ago when low-level formatting actually made some senseDoing a full format will allow the drive to find and re-map any bad sectors that may exist on the drive. It's just a one-off thing anyway generally speaking, so it shouldn't be that much of a bother.
Theoretically, new bad sectors could have appeared during transit from said factory. In any case it doesn't exactly hurt to do it.Considering all HDDs are formated in the factory to remap those bad sectors as needed, what good does it do to redo it at home?
Less than an afternoon, but not by much I suspect... Formatting my 2TB drive when I bought it a couple years ago took quite a while!How long would it take to full format a 4TB drive?
Theoretically anything can happen, including the drive exploding during the initial formatGrall said:Theoretically, new bad sectors could have appeared during transit from said factory. In any case it doesn't exactly hurt to do it.
I want your afternoonsGrall said:Less than an afternoon, but not by much I suspect.
Actually HDD speeds have scaled linearly with platter density.Grall said:HDDs curiously behave a bit like tape drives these days, with the ever-decreasing data transfer rate/capacity ratio they're displaying as storage goes ever up and up and up.
Obviously it hasn't, since you say it takes half a day to format a 4TB drive.Actually HDD speeds have scaled linearly with platter density.
Was it some 5.xk RPM or 7.2k RPM drive? I took that 100MB/s from my 2TB 5200rpm drives. 7.2k ones are pulling off around 130-ish at similar platter densities. Even better would be if you'd say how many platters did the drive have.took 5 hours to full format new 2TB!
Obviously it hasn't, since you say it takes half a day to format a 4TB drive.
I can assure you it didn't take anywhere near that amount for any of the drives I've previously owned.
Well, to be perfectly fair, we also have to consider that higher capacity drives have been adding more platters to the mix. Therefore, a linear relationship between platter density and sustained transfer speed could be entirely feasible, however the total time necessary to wipe the drive extended simply because of the additional platters. It looks like most of the 4TB units are using a five platter system, which is pretty crazy...
I think, as a general rule, hoho is probably very close to correct in that increases in sequential read/write speeds should be reflected in platter density increases. It just "makes sense" that, given the same linear speed under the RW heads, density is the only way for speed to change. More bits + same speed = more bitrate.
Edit: Anecdotally, it took almost 5 hours to format my first terabyte drive, it was one of the WD EARS drives when they were brand new and everyone was all scared of the 4K sectors. I too am a believer in a full format against a brand new disk.
Even with the same number of platters it depends on how the density was increased. 2x bits per track increase = 2x bitrate increase, 2x track density = no bitrate increase, 2x bits per track increase + 2x track density = 2x bitrate increase (2x longer to format)
Your example of 2x TPI and 2x "BPI" would have resulted in a 4x increase in capacity, just FYI
Was it some 5.xk RPM or 7.2k RPM drive? I took that 100MB/s from my 2TB 5200rpm drives. 7.2k ones are pulling off around 130-ish at similar platter densities. Even better would be if you'd say how many platters did the drive have.