I have a few racks of S2600GZ, S2600JF, and S2600WT systems that currently use 512N/512E-formatted SATA HDDs in non-RAID mode (no Intel HW RAID, ESRT2, or RSTe - just ... JBOD) that we would like to continue supporting for our users for at least a few more years if not longer, but one of my concerns is the future availability of 512N/512E-formatted HDDs as 4K-native HDDs become the norm.
While the S2600WT systems are new enough to support 4K-native SATA HDDs, the S2600GZ and S2600JF systems are old enough that state of support for 4K-native formatted HDDs is not quite clear.
The bit of searching for info I've found only mentions support with Intel RAID (HW RAID, RSTe, ESRT2) which indicates a "pretty definite no" for that scenario but says nothing about our non-RAID HDD use.
Support for 4Kn and 512e Advanced Format Disks with Intel® RAID...
TA-1085-4: 4Kn and 512e Advanced Format with Intel® RAID and Intel®...
Will the C600-series PCH found in S2600JF/S2600GZ platforms support 4K-native formatted HDDs if used in non-RAID setups (just as plain SATA HDDs) or should I start strategically stockpiling 512N/512E formatted HDDs for the future?.