Tableau TD2u User Manual page 48

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2. Select Format Destination
3. Press the [Start]
Advanced Format Support
Traditionally, hard drives have had an internal structure built around sectors of 512 bytes.
Newer drives, especially those with capacities greater than 2 TB, feature the Advanced Format
(AF) structure that uses internal sectors of 4096 bytes. Such drives still support I/O transfers
that reference 512-sectors; internally, the drives map these references to the internal 4096-
byte physical sectors. Implicit in this mapping is the need to accommodate writes that alter the
data stored in just a portion of a physical sector. This is accomplished by an inefficient read-
modify-write cycle.
Historically, disks have been formatted with the first partition located at sector 63. However, if
a host computer aligns partitions and clusters of 512-byte sectors on boundaries that are not a
multiple of 8, then the frequency with which the drive must resort to read-modify-write cycles
can severely degrade performance.
The TD2u recognizes AF disks. It formats them accordingly with partitions and clusters
positioned at sector locations that are a multiple of 8.
Format Destination (Menu 5.1.1)
The Format Destination
system used by the TD2u. The TD2u performs what is generally referred to as a Quick Format,
during which it writes the necessary Master Boot Record, Partition Boot Record, and data
structures to the destination disk. The TD2u does not do a full surface scan of the destination
disk. If you want to verify the integrity of the destination disk you should format it using the
disk utilities of a traditional computer and operating system.
You do not need to preformat destination drives when using the disk-to-file duplication mode
of the TD2u. If a destination disk is unformatted and not blank, the TD2u prompts you to
format the disk before it begins the duplication. If a destination disk is unformatted and
appears to be blank, the TD2u automatically formats it.
The TD2u only formats disks using ExFAT; however, disks that have been preformatted with
FAT32 can be used on the system.
(Menu 5.1.1) or
soft key to confirm your selection. The formatting task begins.
option allows you to format destination disks with the ExFAT file
Tableau TD2u User Guide Version 1.3.0
Format Accessory (Menu 5.1.2).