Last week, we relayed information from Fudzilla indicating that Western Digital might be switching to SATA III for its 2 TB HD models as early as Q1 2010. The company denied this information however indicated that there will be indeed something new introduced next year. It will mostly remain invisible for the end user, this is however a major step in the HD industry as it will mark the end of a 30 years-old system: the way physical formatting of HD is carried out.
Since 30 years, all disc-based HDs have the same organization of data.
They are spread in 512 bytes blocks, with a header of each of them allowing its identification, as well as a specific sequence ECC at the end for checking integrity of the stored data. With the release of SSDs, a similar structure was maintained, but blocks are now of 4 KB, 8 times larger and aligning better with current needs.
