A few years ago I started using 4Kn drives in my storage (Open-E and Synology NAS). You had to decide for a 4Kn (native) drive or a 512-byte drive when buying it.
Now, a few years later, companies like Western Digital (HGST) and Seagate come with ‘Advanced Format’ drives, it’s one drive which you can use in 512-byte mode or 4Kn mode. I recently bought two Western Digital (HGST) Ultrastar DC HC550 (18TB) drives and had some struggles with them to use them in my Synology NAS as 4Kn drives. See how I fixed it..
I inserted the drives in my Synology (DS1817+) and when I wanted to create a new Volume it showed me the following:
So I opened an SSH session to the Synology and did an fdisk --list which showed me it was having a sectors of 512 bytes instead of 4096 bytes:
Even after connecting the disk to my Laptop using an Aptgtek USB to SATA converter and formatting it using Windows 10 with a different sector size, it still showed as non 4Kn drive in the Synology.
Then I used the tool: “Hugo” which is a Western Digital proprietary tool and can be downloaded here.
I used version 7.0.3 for Windows and used the following commands:
To detect the disk:
C:\Program Files\WDC\HUGO\bin>hugo s --device
Manuf. Model Serial Interface Capacity Type Firmware
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1) SanDisk X600 1839E0805995 SATA 256 GB SSD X6114012
Device handles: \\.\PhysicalDrive0
2) HGST WUH721818ALE6L4 3WG7MU9K SATA 18000 GB HDD PCGNW120
Device handles: \\.\PhysicalDrive2
To format the disk:
C:\Program Files\WDC\HUGO\bin>hugo format -g \\.\PhysicalDrive2 -b 4096 --fastformat -n max
******************************** WARNING **********************************
The Format command will result in loss of data on the specified device.
This device might be your boot device and it won't be protected.
******************************** WARNING **********************************
Are you sure you want to Format this device? (Y/N) Y
Format device on 1 Device(s)...
Failed: Format command Failed on device 3WG7MU9K.
Device will not be formatted.
Even though it fails to format the disk, it does write the sector size / partition table to it and when you insert the drive in you Synology now, it will show you 4096 byte sector size and you can now create your 4Kn volume!
Note: I first used Hugo v7.2.6 without success, then when I used Hugo v7.0.3 it notified me of using the -n max parameter, which did the trick.
UPDATE (18-02-2021): Since all download links to Hugo 7.0.3 seem to be removed, download it here: HUGO-7.0.3.win64
current drives are starting to be 4k block sizes under the covers – but the drive can either be configured to show that 4096-byte sector size to the host/controller (4kn, or 4k native mode), or essentially lie and say it’s a 512-byte block, which gives you the 512e (emulated) mode. The downsize to 512e is since date is actually written to the drive in 4096-byte chunks, if the host writes 512 bytes, the drives has to go fetch the 4096 bytes that were already on the drive, change just the 512 bytes the host wants changed, and write the 4096 bytes out again. This whole process enables the drive to work with a large amount of equipment that is not (and perhaps may never be), 4k-compatible, but it achieves that compatibility through a method that works, but can have a large overhead on writes.
To answer ‘why 4k’, it means that 1 sector on your harddisk is 4096 bytes, instead of the traditional 512 bytes. This results in a (small) performance advantage, and makes it possible to have better error correction (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Format). Note that the number of bytes on your harddisk per sector (512 vs 4096) has nothing to do with the number of pixels (3840 x 2160, which is called “4k” resolution) on your screen.
Thanks for writing this article, ordered sata to usb connector to give this a try.
Thank you very much!
I had the opposite problem: the old Dell р310 controller did not see the new HGST 4kn disks. Switching (formatting :-)) these disks to a cluster size of 512 solve the problem.
For those of you that are writing that do not understand ‘why 4k’ , a lot of NASs and home servers (aside from a NAS sys) are being used for media today that plays high-end movies. 4k drives are designed for 4k UHD video such as the ones you would play on a 75″ flatpanel wall TV.
Even those of us, myself included, who do not use 4K TV’s these drives help future-proof media players for the next 5-6 years beofre the next hard disk technology is coming out which will be 8k drives.
So to answer the question briefly, many modern NAS’ such as my Synology NAS today allow 4Kn disks to be used in a storage pool, which is what I will upgrade to soon. Because, because its compatible with 4k UHD videos for my storage for playback.I already own 4, perhaps 5 UHD movies.
I have updated the post with a download link to Hugo 7.0.3.
Hi,
Great article. I followed it to the dot on HGST He10 HUH721010ALE600 10TB drive but it still stays as 512e. I used HUGO version 7.3.2 as 7.0.3 is now where to be found.
I searched everywhere for 7.0.3 and all the download links are removed.
I would really appreciate if you can share it at whatever location you prefer like dropbox, google drive etc.
Thanks
AM
Could you please tell us why you want to change the sector size?
Do you expect any speed gain? Or minimize space waste?
Would be nice if you could put some download links to Hugo software since the tutorial is nice.
What would be the real world benefit to use 4K instead of 512-byte?