Solved Installation for Advanced Format Hard Drives?

[bancosrs]

Hello,

I recently got a new Western Digital Hard Drive (WD5000BPKT: Scorpio Black) http://www.amazon.com/dp/B004LR1RPK/..._26725410_item for my laptop and on the wrapping it says to be aware of advanced formatting.

If I installed Windows 7 Home Premium x64 SP1 U (media refresh), do I need to install the software WD says to do to partition your HDD for optimal performance?

I am unsure how exactly the new advanced formatting technology works and what I have to do to get the most out of my HDD. I may not even be sure that the WD5000BPKT supports Advanced formatting.

Here is WD page about Advanced Format Utility: Product Features

Thanks

 

[VistaKing]

Hi bancosrs

You should have no problems doing a clean install on the AF hard drive . Windows 7 will automatically align the drive to 1024.

Press enter when you see the screen that says Press any key to boot from cd or DVD…( image below )

When you get to this screen ( image below )

Press Shift and F10 . You will get a command prompt window . It should open up to X:\Sources . In there input these commands and press enter after each line .

DISKPART LIST DISK SELECT DISK 0 CLEAN CREATE PRIMARY PARTITION SELECT PARTITION 1 ACTIVE FORMAT FS=NTFS LABEL="ANYTHING YOU WANT HERE" QUICK ASSIGN LETTER=C EXIT EXIT

Back on the image above press Install Now . Check the I accept the license terms box and click on Next. Click on the Custom (advanced) option. Then choose
Disk 0 Partition 1: Window (C:\) and click Next

   Note

Doing the commands above you will not get the hidden partition System Reserved

 

[bancosrs]

Now if this was a completely new HDD would I have to input any of the commands before the installation, or are those just for reinstalling a clean version of Windows 7?

Basically, I already installed Windows without doing the diskpart commands. I had just recieved this HDD in the mail today and assumed I did not have to clean it (unless AF needed me to).

Stupid question, but by skipping those steps should I go back and reinstall windows?

 

[VistaKing]

If you received the drive in the mail I don't think its been formated but if you just proceed with the installation without formatting it first you will get the hidden partition .

It's a clean drive you will have to do a clean install anyways

 

[AddRAM]

Don`t create a partitoin for Windows 7 and you will end up with a sytem reserved partiton and a windows 7 partition. Create a partition before hand and you won`t get a system reserved partition. Simple as that.

Better not to have a system reserved partition if you don`t need it, a waste of a primary partition in my opinion.

Example.

 

[whs]

This looks like a normal HDD. There is nothing special you need to do. Your Windows 7 installation should be fine.

Yes, you probably have the extra 100MB active system partition. But that is OK. When you make images of the system, make an image of the 100MB partition once and stick it in a safe place. That little partition never changes unless you make a double boot. Then image it again. Then image C and in the future you need only C images. The 100MB partition you only need to dig out if you ever have to change the disk again because that little partition contains your bootmgr.

PS> just saw that AddRAM and I disagree. I think he has good reasons to dread the 100MB partition. Here is a compromise. Copy the bootmgr to C and you can forget the 100MB partition.

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/209885-bootmgr-move-c-easybcd.html

 

[gregrocker]

There no reason to avoid the hidden partition, and the Diskpart Clean command is used more for troubleshooting install failures. You were correct to simply boot the installer to do a normal Clean Install Windows 7.

Why do you have two threads on this same subject here? It is frowned upon by the Admins and wastes our time.

 

[bancosrs]

Out of general curiosity. With AF technology do you have to pay attention to anything with the mobo or dual booting?

I saw a topic about WD Advanced Format Drive and needing special drivers to install a WD Advanced Format Drive on an Intel chipset.

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?

 

[AddRAM]

Stop worrying about this advanced format technology, just install windows, it will take care of any formatting.

If you`re ready to go, you should have windows installed in 15 minutes.

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/1649-clean-install-windows-7-a.html

If you really want to use ubuntu, you don`t have to install it, you can just run it from a cd.

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/LiveCD

 

[gregrocker]

It says in the Product Description it only requires special alignment if you try to run a legacy OS like XP. So it shouldn't require anything special for Clean Install Windows 7 or Dual Boot - Windows 7 and Linux - Windows 7 Forums.

How is performance so far?

 

[VistaKing]

If you're going to dual boot you would want to create a partition for Windows and them install Ubuntu on the unallocated space . The drivers you're talking about is the intel Sata drivers (IRST) .

How much space do you want for Windows 7 ?

 

[whs]

Out of general curiosity. With AF technology do you have to pay attention to anything with the mobo or dual booting?

I saw a topic about WD Advanced Format Drive and needing special drivers to install a WD Advanced Format Drive on an Intel chipset.

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?

Ununtu I would indtall in virtual. That is a lot more practical from many points of view.

Here is a little tutorial how to install Zorin which is an Ubuntu derivative. For Ubuntu it is the same procedure except for the VMware Tools installation which might be different.

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/278957-vmware-player-install-setup-zorin.html

 

[bancosrs]

How is performance so far?

Running a lot better. Keeping everything as clean as possible until my term is over for school. After, I should be able to get all my documents, games, movies, music, etc. back on. Right now I have only the essential documents and programs.

How much space do you want for Windows 7 ?

Mostly all of it to run windows 7, and just enough to run ubuntu. I may do what AddRam or whs suggested because the only reason I need ubuntu is for the compiler.

I know Eclipse is a good compiler for C if you get it to work, but I never have. I may try again with eclipse and have no use for Ubuntu. The question was really for future purposes. In case I wanted to dual boot for other reasons or other OS.

However, I may also try a Virtual machine

 

[Lady Fitzgerald]

There no reason to avoid the hidden partition, and the Diskpart Clean command is used more for troubleshooting install failures...

I agree. The hidden partition is only 100MB for crying out loud, people, one lousy tenth of a GB. If disk space is so tight the space the partition takes up becomes a problem, you really need to get a bigger drive.

 

[Jacob7]

The key is to use the latest tools. If you use Windows 7, install from SP1 CD. If you use Linux to partition your hard drive, make sure to use a recent distribution that comes with more recent partitioning tools. It used to be the case that Linux fdisk did not align partitions at 4kb boundaries, but maybe that got fixed recently (in any case, a lot of distributions now use different tools). The key is to align all partition boundaries at the start of a 4KB sector, as most operating systems often tend to write data in 4kb blocks. It would be a serious performance hit if such a write is split between two different 4kb sectors on the disk. Just for fun, I downloaded an alignment check tool to check partition alignments on a 3-year old PC that dual-boots Linux and Windows 7 (on an older pre-advance format drive), and it said they were already aligned correctly for 4KB sectors.

 

[King Arthur]

There no reason to avoid the hidden partition, and the Diskpart Clean command is used more for troubleshooting install failures...

I agree. The hidden partition is only 100MB for crying out loud, people, one lousy tenth of a GB. If disk space is so tight the space the partition takes up becomes a problem, you really need to get a bigger drive.

I'll also add that for 100MB you get a centralized and independent storage location for Bootmgr which helps immensely in multi-boot situations, and you also get access to WinRE (Windows Recovery Environment) where you can diagnose and in certain cases fix Windows via command-line without having to pop in a Windows 7 DVD. A very hard deal to refuse, if you ask me!

 

[Jacob7]

There no reason to avoid the hidden partition, and the Diskpart Clean command is used more for troubleshooting install failures...

I agree. The hidden partition is only 100MB for crying out loud, people, one lousy tenth of a GB. If disk space is so tight the space the partition takes up becomes a problem, you really need to get a bigger drive.

I'll also add that for 100MB you get a centralized and independent storage location for Bootmgr which helps immensely in multi-boot situations, and you also get access to WinRE (Windows Recovery Environment) where you can diagnose and in certain cases fix Windows via command-line without having to pop in a Windows 7 DVD. A very hard deal to refuse, if you ask me!

I think I have this partition on my PCs. Do you know how to access the WinRE that's on that partition? I always had to make DVD for that.

 

[Lady Fitzgerald]

There no reason to avoid the hidden partition, and the Diskpart Clean command is used more for troubleshooting install failures...

I agree. The hidden partition is only 100MB for crying out loud, people, one lousy tenth of a GB. If disk space is so tight the space the partition takes up becomes a problem, you really need to get a bigger drive.

I'll also add that for 100MB you get a centralized and independent storage location for Bootmgr which helps immensely in multi-boot situations, and you also get access to WinRE (Windows Recovery Environment) where you can diagnose and in certain cases fix Windows via command-line without having to pop in a Windows 7 DVD. A very hard deal to refuse, if you ask me!

Now that I think about it (excuse the smoke), the partition is also needed to use Bitlocker in Win 7 Ultimate.

 

[lehnerus2000]

IMO, Pre-partition

I agree with AddRAM.

If you want to dual boot Linux and Windows, pre-partition your HDD to avoid that hidden boot partition.

I've read a number threads here, where people have had problems dual booting Linux and Windows and a lot of the time it seems to be related to the hidden boot partition.

Anecdotally, I always pre-partition my OS HDD, thus avoiding the hidden boot partition and I haven't had any boot problems on my PC (XP, W7 and Linux Mint 14 and previously XP, W7 and Ubuntu 10).

It seems to me that gregrocker regularly has to help people fix hidden boot partition problems.

Note:
I'm not saying that all multi-boot problems are related to the hidden boot partition.

Now that I think about it (excuse the smoke), the partition is also needed to use Bitlocker in Win 7 Ultimate.

I thought I read that the contents of that partition were merged into the W7 partition, if you prevented the hidden boot partition from being created.

 

[Jacob7]

I agree with AddRAM.

If you want to dual boot Linux and Windows, pre-partition your HDD to avoid that hidden boot partition.

I've read a number threads here, where people have had problems dual booting Linux and Windows and a lot of the time it seems to be related to the hidden boot partition.

Anecdotally, I always pre-partition my OS HDD, thus avoiding the hidden boot partition and I haven't had any boot problems on my PC (XP, W7 and Linux Mint 14 and previously XP, W7 and Ubuntu 10).

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.