What is the deal with hard drive technology moving to 4K sectors, vs. 512 bytes? Are 4K sector disk

Posted by Chris W. Rea on Super User See other posts from Super User or by Chris W. Rea
Published on 2010-04-20T00:07:49Z Indexed on 2010/04/20 0:14 UTC
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hard-drive

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storage

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Technology

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sectors

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4k-sectors

I've noticed that some Western Digital hard drives are now sporting 4K sectors, that is, the sectors are larger: 4096 bytes vs. the actual de facto standard of 512 bytes. So:

What's the big deal with 4K sectors? Is it marketing hype, or a real advantage?
Why should somebody building a new PC care, or not, about 4K sectors?
Why is this transition taking place now? Why didn't it happen sooner?
Are there things to look out for when buying a 4K sector hard drive? e.g. incompatibility?
Anything else we should know about 4K sectors?

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