I found additional links that I used to work with the new hard
drive after Thanksgiving. I should explain what the problem
is with these new drives. For a very long time, the standard
sector size was 512. It's been that way so long that computer
bioses, operating systems, and software programs assume this to
always be the case. Due to legacy issues with DOS and tricks
used to increase drive capacity over the years, many hacks have
been implemented that further limit options. In order to pass
the 2TB barrier, drive vendors have decided to make the drives use
4K sectors internally and then expose 512 sectors to the OS.
The drive has a firmware that converts between the two.
WD calls these advanced format drives. Since the OS is
lied to, it's hard for it to properly align partitions on the
drive. What does alignment matter? If a partition is
created on a boundary, it lines up with how the drive reads and
writes data (in blocks). This makes it run fast. If it
has to write to two blocks because of an alignment problem, it
slows the drive down significantly. Windows XP can't handle
these new drives without some hacks. Windows Vista and 7 can
if the drive is formatted by them. (not an upgrade from XP)
Linux until 2.6.33 can't fully handle these drives.
FreeBSD can't handle these drives without manually
partitioning to set the alignment. It's a pain.
More on the problem:
4K
Sectors & Glabel patch info
WD EARS
howto on FreeBSD forums
WD
KB article on their drives
Microsoft
performance & drive partitioning for SQL server