Originally named the Long Data Sector (LDS) Committee, IDEMA’s Advanced Format technology group is a consortium of leading storage hardware and software companies dedicated to driving technology standards and solutions that support the advancement of data storage.
Advanced Format (AF) is a milestone technology that enhances storage efficiencies by modifying the data sector length using larger physical sector sizes than the traditional, 512-byte sector architecture. Larger physical sectors allow enhanced data protection and correction algorithms, which provide increased data reliability from the hard disk drives that use them. Larger physical sectors also enable greater format efficiencies, creating additional space for user data. These improvements result in better user experiences.
Generation One AF technology specifies the sector length of 4,096 (4K) bytes. Industry-wide transition to the 512 emulation (512e) and 4K native (4Kn) implementations of Gen One AF technology officially began in 2011, heralding a new era in hard disk drives.
AF technologies and its standards are the result of ten years of collaborative work sponsored by IDEMA and more than 15 companies. The standards governing AF technologies are designed to ensure higher storage capacities for generations to come.
