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4Kn Hard Drives


rloew

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I received my MG04ACA600A 4Kn 6TB Hard Drive today.

I have started running tests with it.

The results so far are:

The MA785 BIOS, the M5A97 CSN BIOS, the Z87 CSM BIOS and the MSI AMD970 SLI Krait CSM BIOS recognize the Drive in IDE Mode but report it as having 512 Byte Sectors. All Reads and Writes report errors due to overrun.

The Z87 UEFI and the MSI AMD970 SLI Krait UEFI Shells can access files on the Drive. The M5A97 does not have a built-in EFI Shell.

The Z87 CSM BIOS in AHCI Mode will boot TeraByte Plus Patched DOS 7.1. Windows 98SE will not boot properly in normal Mode, only Safe Mode.
Windows 98SE on a 4Kn Drive will boot if DOS is booted from a 512e Drive and the Drive letters swapped.
The AMD970 in AHCI Mode only started loading DOS but hung before it was fully loaded.

TeraByte Plus Patched DOS 7.1 supports the Disk if the BIOS does. TeraByte Plus Patched Windows 98SE supports the Disk if the Drive Controller is reset when the Driver is loaded.

TeraByte Plus Patched Windows 98SE can be used in IDE Mode by Hot Swapping the Drive after DOS has completed loading.

I have written a DDO Overlay to support this Drive. This let me run DOS and Windows 9x on my Z87 and MA785 in IDE Mode. I had to disable the DDO if booting Windows XP otherwise Windows XP will not boot.

Windows XP 32 on the MA785 does not recognize the Disk. As noted in the article I linked previously, a 4Kn compatible Driver is needed for Windows XP 32.

The latest UNIATA Driver caused an endless loop even if the Drive is not recognized by the BIOS.

XP will not boot if the BIOS or a DDO supports 4Kn. NTLDR crashes due to buffer overflow.

Windows 2000 will not boot if a 4Kn Drive is present, even if it was not detected by the BIOS.

Windows 7. 8 and 10 support the Disk and Data on it. No special Drivers needed.
They will not create Partitions beyond 2TiB on an MBR Drive. A separate Partitioner is needed.

I was able to Install Windows 10 on the Disk using EFI and GPT on the AMD970. The Disk also booted on the Z87.
The M5A97 EFI does not support 4Kn Drives. It has an early version of EFI (2012).

The non-translating BYTECC USB Duplicating Dock and Vantec NexStar Duplicating Doc, do not support 4Kn.

The auto-translating BYTECC BT-300 USB Adapter fully supports this Disk. I was able to Partition, Format, and load Data on the Disk using the TeraByte Plus Patched Windows 98SE.

The recent non-translating Kingwin USI-2535 USB Adapter supports this Disk. It passes through the 4K interface.

Windows 8 and 10 can be Installed on a 4Kn Drive. Windows 7 will install up to the first boot and then crash afterwards. Ubuntu 16.04 Installs without problems.

Edited by rloew
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After 3 weeks of experimenting, I have come to the following conclusions about using 4Kn Drives with Windows:

Boot Drives:

Supported by newer UEFI BIOSes (2014 and later) using SATA connections only. Requires GPT Partitioning. Supported by Windows 8 x64 and Windows 10 x64. Windows 7 Installs but crashes.

The Z87 CSM supports DOS 7.1 TBP in AHCI Mode only. Windows 98SE TBP is unstable and only completes boot in Safe Mode.

 

Data Drives:

Windows 7, 8 and 10 support 4Kn Drives using MBR, with SATA or USB connections, but incorrectly report the size of >2TiB Partitions.
The Disk Managers will not Partition beyond 2TiB but can Format existing Partitions without limit.

Windows XP supports 4Kn Drives using USB connections only. XP correctly reports Partition size and can Partition beyond 2TiB.
XP will ignore a SATA connected drive if it is not supported by the BIOS or an Overlay. Otherwise it will crash. XP with UNIATA will hang.

Windows 2000 supports 4Kn Drives using USB connections only. Windows 2000 correctly reports Partition size and can Partition and Format beyond 2TiB.
Windows 2000 will crash if a SATA connected drive is present.

DOS 7.1 TBP is compatible with SATA connected 4Kn Drives if the BIOS supports it or an Overlay DDO is used.

Windows 98SE TBP is compatible with SATA connected 4Kn Drives if used with DOS 7.1 TBP and an Overlay DDO.
Windows 98SE TBP is compatible with USB connected 4Kn Drives.

 

USB Drives:

Older USB Bridges that do not translate or do not support >2TiB Drives will not support 4Kn Drives.
Translating USB Bridges support 4Kn Drives.
Newer Non-Translating USB Bridges support 4Kn Drives

 

DOS 7.1 TBP  is DOS 7.1 Patched by the TeraByte Plus Package.
Windows 98SE TBP  is Windows 98SE Patched by the TeraByte Plus Package.
Neither standard DOS nor standard Windows 98SE provide any support for 4K Logical Sector Devices.

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6 hours ago, rloew said:

Data Drives:

Windows 7, 8 and 10 support 4Kn Drives using MBR, with SATA or USB connections, but incorrectly report the size of >2TiB Partitions.
Windows XP supports 4Kn Drives using USB connections only. XP correctly reports Partition size and can Partition beyond 2TiB.
Windows 2000 supports 4Kn Drives using USB connections only. Windows 2000 correctly reports Partition size and can Partition and Format beyond 2TiB.
Windows 98SE TBP is compatible with USB connected 4Kn Drives.
Neither standard DOS nor standard Windows 98SE provide any support for 4K Logical Sector Devices.

USB Drives:
Newer Non-Translating USB Bridges support 4Kn Drives

On 11/3/2017 at 9:59 PM, rloew said:

The recent non-translating Kingwin USI-2535 USB Adapter supports this Disk. It passes through the 4K interface.

Well, USB seems to be the way to go, then. I find it, however, amusing to notice that Windows NT5.x supports USB connected 4Kn Drives correctly, while NT6.x reports incorrectly the size of >2TiB Partitions, thus requiring a (yet non-exixting) patch, although otherwise working correctly. @rloew: your thorough testing and reporting is deeply appreciated! :yes:

 

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