Sata 6 Gb/S; Advanced Format (Af); Fluid Dynamic Bearings (Fdb); Intellipower - Western Digital WD15NPVX Technical Reference Manual

WD Green MB500M-6Gb
3.1

SATA 6 Gb/s

SATA 6 Gb/s is the next generation interface for SATA hard drives. It adds to the functionality of the
SATA 1.5 Gb/s interface with the following features:
Improved Power Management— provides improved power management features including Host
Initiated SATA Power Management (HIPM) and Device Initiated SATA Power Management
(DIPM).
Staggered Spin-up — allows the system to control whether the drive will spin up immediately or
wait until the interface is fully ready before spinning up.
Asynchronous Signal Recovery (ASR) — robustness feature that improves signal recovery.
Enclosure Services — defines external enclosure management and support features.
Backplane Interconnect — defines how to lay out signal line traces in a backplane.
Auto-activate DMA — provides increased command efficiency through automated activation of
the DMA controller.
Device Configuration Overlay (DCO) — allows hiding of supported features via a SATA feature
mask.
3.2

Advanced Format (AF)

Advanced Format (AF) technology is adopted by WD and other drive manufacturers to increase media
format efficiencies, thus enabling larger drive capacities.
In Advanced Format, each physical sector is composed of eight 512 byte logical sectors, totalling 4096
bytes. WD is shipping Advanced Format drives as 512 Byte Emulated Devices until full operating
system support for the Advanced Format host interface is available. 512 Byte Emulated Device drives
are backward compatible with 512 byte sector accesses.
WD Advanced Format hard drives may require you to run the WD Align software utility after you
install your operating system or partition and format the drive as a secondary drive. WD Align
software aligns partitions on the Advanced Format drive to ensure it provides full performance for
certain configurations. Go to
guidelines.
3.3

Fluid Dynamic Bearings (FDB)

A bearing design that allows ultra-low rotational drag while providing high lateral stiffness to steadily
hold the spinning center of the diskpack for high-accuracy of reading and writing of data. FDB
provide increased shock robustness and enhanced reliability while reducing power consumption and
acoustics.
3.4

IntelliPower

A fine-tuned balance of spin speed, transfer rate and caching algorithms designed to deliver both
significant power savings and solid performance. For each GreenPower™ drive model, WD may use a
different, invariable RPM. Spin speed is reduced but optimized through a special blend of channel
capability, electronics through-put capability, and mechanical resonances to achieve low power
consumption.
3.5

Reduced Power Spinup (RPS)

Applications for 2.5-inch hard drives include USB external hard drives, notebook systems, and
Consumer Electronics (CE). Due to the fact that many of these applications are portable in nature, an
option for limiting startup current levels and increasing spinup speed is necessary.
2679-771422-A00
www.wdc.com/advformat
RELEASED 5/2/13 (WD CONFIDENTIAL)
for important configuration and installation
Product Features
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