Installation for Advanced Format Hard Drives?

bancosrs said:

And for dual booting. Say, for example, Win 7 / ubuntu. Will you need to partition the drive in a certain way or can you go ahead and doing everything like you would with a normal HDD?

You can do it like this if you like:
Dual Boot - Windows 7 and Linux

I see there are fans of the 100MB partition - and the advantages you pointed out are well understood. If you use Bitlocker in Ultimate or if you multi-boot, the 100MB partition serves a purpose.

But for e.g. imaging, it can complicate matters. If you transfer your OS from a HDD to a SSD with an image, the 100MB partition is in the way. And since I do that with every system, I always first copy the bootmgr to C and transfer only the C partition. I have done that since years and never noticed any shortcomings.

I have only Home Premiums, so no Bitlocker, and I never multi-boot. I prefer the virtual solutions. The 100MB partition could of course be dealt with in the imaging scenario. but why bother.

Jacob7 said:

I never touched the hidden boot partitions, and Linux still booted fine. I don't see how they could possibly interfere with Linux boot process.

The other way around. :)

See Golden's link:
Dual Boot - Windows 7 and Linux

Lady Fitzgerald said:

whs said:

I see there are fans of the 100MB partition - and the advantages you pointed out are well understood. If you use Bitlocker in Ultimate or if you multi-boot, the 100MB partition serves a purpose.

But for e.g. imaging, it can complicate matters. If you transfer your OS from a HDD to a SSD with an image, the 100MB partition is in the way. And since I do that with every system, I always first copy the bootmgr to C and transfer only the C partition. I have done that since years and never noticed any shortcomings.

I have only Home Premiums, so no Bitlocker, and I never multi-boot. I prefer the virtual solutions. The 100MB partition could of course be dealt with in the imaging scenario. but why bother.

Ok, I'm confused (doesn't take much). When transfering the OS from a HDD to another drive, such as an SSD, why can't you just image both the C:/ partition and the 100MB partition together and "restore" them to the new drive (or even clone them)?

You can, but you have to create 2 seperate aligned partitions on the SSD with Diskpart. That is, of course, possible, but a bit finagle because of the alignment requirement. I prefer to do things the simple, straight forward way.

You can, of course, align a SSD in 20/20 hindsight. But that may not be easy for a layman to do. The method I describe in my tutorial is only one way to do it. There is also a quick and dirty way using Partition Wizard. The best, however, is to start with an aligned partition.

When you make a fresh install with e.g. a Windows 7 installation disc, the installer will do the alignment for you.

If, however, you move the OS (and the 100MB partition) from a HDD to a SSD, you have to take care of the SSD alignment first. The recovery disc of the imaging program will not do the alignment for you. With Macrium, there is a way to keep the original alignment of the source. But if the source was a HDD, you never know what that was (unless you checked that beforehand - and then it may still not be right).