In collaboration with the hard disk drive manufacturers, IDEMA Long Data Sector committees determined the standards governing AF technologies specifically geared for usage in high performance server environments.
Enterprise-class storage products using AF will incorporate the "native" implementation of AF, where data on the AF native hard drive will be passed to the host in the same sector increments as physically stored on the disk media.
Generation One AF native hard drives will employ the 4,096 bytes-per-sector architecture, and are referred to as "AF 4Kn". Starting 2012, hard drive manufacturers will commence shipment of Generation One AF 4Kn enterprise-class hard drives.
