Advanced Format

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sir_rob

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jan 27, 2003
Messages
135
I have googled and searched on this forum, but I have not been able to find all of the answers that I am looking fro regarding advanced format drives and Windows XP. Feel free to link to other posts if I simply missed them.

My understanding is that WD, Samsung, and possibly Hitachi drives have jumpers to enable usage in Windows XP. You first either need to format them in Windows 7 or Vista or use the respective manufacturer's tools to realign the drive after formatting in Windows XP. If I do not desire to create more than one partition I am done. Is all of this correct, or am I missing something? Also, will there be a performance hit for using advanced format drives with XP?
 
If you use the jumper you can format them in win xp. Basically it offsets all sectors by 1 so the default first partition that starts on sector 63 really is sector 64 on the media. 64 is divisible by 8 so the performance penalty goes away.
 
Yes but do not use the jumper for anything else than XP. You will be using a misaligned partition and a firmware hack to align it again; causing aligned partitions which Vista/Win7 create to become misaligned again. So use with care!
 
I have Windows 7 machines that I can use to format the drive, but I will be using the drive in a Windows XP box. It sounds like the best solution is to format it in Windows XP, without the jumper, and use the align utility. This way I can move the hard drive to a Windows 7 box later without any problems. Right?
 
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