Support for Advanced Format Block Size 4 KB Hard-Disk Drives

PERC 9 and later family of hardware controller support in Storage Management. You can use legacy 512 B sector hard drives to transition to Advanced Format Block Size 4 KB hard drives. Block Size 4 KB hard drives use the storage-surface media more efficiently by combining data that would have been stored in eight 512 B sector hard drives into one sector of 4096 B (4 KB). This data-combining feature in Block Size 4 KB hard drives results in improved data efficiency and error correction capabilities.

Storage Management supports virtual disk creation on Block Size 4 KB hard drives connected to PERC 9 and later of hardware controllers.

NOTE: Block-Size 4 KB hard drives are not supported on controllers before the PERC 9 family of hardware controllers. When the Block Size 4 KB hard drive is connected to any hardware controller before PERC 9, the Block Size 4 KB hard drive is displayed as Unsupported.
  • When you create a virtual disk using the Advanced Wizard, you can select the physical disk sector from the Logical Block Size drop-down list. The options available are:
    • 512B
    • 4KB
  • You cannot use both Block Size 4 KB hard drives and 512 B sector hard drives for a virtual disk creation as mixing of hard drive sectors is not allowed in Storage Management.
    NOTE:  When the system contains any 512e sector hard drives, the 512e sector hard drives are identified/reported as 512 B sector hard drives and follows the behavior of the 512 B sector hard drives.