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I have an external drive. Inside is a Seagate Barracuda (ST3000DM001 (Datasheet)). With its original controller (Intenso) its working fine. But with another controller (AS-Media) its partition layout is wrong and nothing can be read by Windows (Win7 Ent. SP1). I have read contradictory things on 4K alignment (4k-sector-hard-drives, 4K disk compatibility update). Can someone please confirm the following statements in quotation marks (based on the inserted image made with Windows 10 Powershell: Get-Disk | Format-List).
"The drive is 4K as for all drives above 2TB. The Intenso controller does no emulation and thus the drive is visible as a 4Kn drive to the operating system. The AS-Media controller does emulation and therefore the drive is visible as a 512e drive to the operating system."
Windows 7
wmic diskdrive get bytespersector,model
reports with Intenso:
4096 Intenso USB 3.0 Device USB Device
reports with AS-Media:
512 ASMT 2115 USB Device
A similar question can be found here.
UPDATE
Windows 10 build 1607++ and Windows 7 SP1 with KB 982018 should be able to correctly report if the drive is 4Kn, 512n or 512e. As you can see from the screenshot both operating systems report 4Kn (4096/4096) for the external drive (H: in Win10 and I: in Win7). If this drive emulates the advanced format 512e (512/4096) it would look like the boot partition (C:) in the screenshot. Why should one not trust this output? What would be the rational to fake the LogicalSectorSize?
Update 2
All my misconception (read "contradictory" above) resulted from the problem that there are possibly 2 emulations. 1st emulation (512e) between drive and host interface (when directly connected to internal SATA port). 2nd emulation ("4Ke") between USB and host interface (for external drives) where the USB interface is a man in the middle, delegating between drive and host. Possibly 2 emulations because it obviously depends on the controller. With Intenso ("4Ke") there is a 2nd emulation and with AS-Media ("Non-4Ke") there is not a 2nd emulation.
dkeck
Posted 2017-11-26T16:00:47.370
Reputation: 203
No, actually the Intenso controller does emulation. That’s because there is virtually no consumer-grade 4Kn drives available as of yet. – Daniel B – 2017-11-26T16:21:01.877
This makes sense regarding the fact that it is working with Windows 7 since this OS can't handle 4Kn. But why does it report to be 4Kn in Windows 10? If it is emulated (512e) why doesn't it work with the AS Media controller? – dkeck – 2017-11-26T16:42:14.447
4kn is native 4k sectors, which means if it’s reported as being 4K then it’s emulating that support but actually 512 enchanted. Furthermore Windows 7 doesn’t even support 4K native, so your drive couldn’t use that mode, given your OS – Ramhound – 2017-11-26T17:58:45.487
Please see the update. If this was emulated (512/4096) why does the AS-Media controller then fail to work? Why is 4Kn (4096/4096) reported on both operating systems? – dkeck – 2017-11-26T20:21:18.990