Hardware Reference
In-Depth Information
ATA-6upgradedtheLBAfunctionsfromusing28-bitnumberstousinglarger48-bitnum-
bers.
The ATA-6 specification extends the LBA interface such that it can use 48-bit sector
addressing. This means that the maximum capacity is increased to 2
48
(281,474,976,710,656) total sectors. Because each sector stores 512 bytes, this results in
the maximum drive capacity shown here:
Max. Values
———————————————————
Total Sectors
281,474,976,710,656
———————————————————
Total Bytes 144,115,188,075,855,872
Megabytes (MB) 144,115,188,076
Mebibytes (MiB) 137,438,953,472
Gigabytes (GB) 144,115,188
Gibibytes (GiB) 134,217,728
Terabytes (TB) 144,115
Tebibytes (TiB) 131,072
Petabytes (PB) 144.12
Pebibytes (PiB) 128.00
As you can see, the 48-bit LBA in ATA-6 allows a capacity of just over 144PB (petabytes
= quadrillion bytes)!
BecausetheEDDBIOSfunctionsusea64-bitLBAnumber,theyhaveamuchlargerlim-
it:
Max. Values
——————————————————————-
Total Sectors 18,446,744,073,709,551,616
——————————————————————-
Total Bytes
9,444,732,965,739,290,427,392
Megabytes (MB)
9,444,732,965,739,290
Mebibytes (MiB)
9,007,199,254,740,992
Gigabytes (GB)
9,444,732,965,739
Gibibytes (GiB)
8,796,093,022,208
Terabytes (TB)
9,444,732,966
Tebibytes (TiB)
8,589,934,592
Petabytes (PB)
9,444,733
Pebibytes (PiB)
8,388,608
Exabytes (EB)
9,445
Exbibytes (EiB)
8,192
Zettabytes (ZB)
9.44
Zebibytes (ZiB)
8.00
