Advanced Format is mainly about expanding the capacity of hard disk drives. However, it does have some effect on performance. By packing in more data in less space, Advanced Format allows for higher areal density. So, we can expect higher sequential transfer rates from Advanced Format drives. The closer spatiality of the data blocks should also improve sequential seek times.

Of course, all this is merely theoretical, based on what we understand about Advanced Format. To find out the exact effect Advanced Format has on the performance of the hard disk drive, we undertook to test two similar hard disk drives. The only difference is one supports Advanced Format, while the other uses the legacy sector size of 512 bytes. Let's take a look...