XP POSReady 2009 and ADVANCED FORMAT HDDs

[eatup]

Does Windows XP Embedded POSReady 2009 have native support for advanced format hard drives, or must I do the trick formatting the partition with Windows 7 first prior to installing POSReady '09?

EDIT: I see that the XP POSReady 2009 install screen does a fresh format everytime, but lets the user choose the allocation size up to 4096. Does this mean POSReady '09 supports ADVANCED FORMAT HDDs natively (ie. no need to realign hdd after install as is the case with XP Pro)?

 

[Anshad Edavana]

Hi

I never installed XP Embeded but i assume choosing 4096 bytes allocation unit is not enough to solve the partition alignment issue with "Advanced Format Drives". Usually 4096 bytes allocation unit means the default cluster size of NTFS ( 8 sector ). XP, Sever 2003 , 7 and 8 all uses eight sectors by default but XP usually creates it's first partition on sector 63 ( not always - in my system first partition started on Sector 19 ! ). This is because XP setup uses old C/H/S based partitioning while NT6 family ( Vista and later ) defaulted to LBA based partitioning.

I would recommend partitioning with "Windows 7" disc prior to installing and avoid any potential chance of partition misalignment ( Use DISKPART to avoid the creation of 100 MB "System" Partition ).


If you are going to install it on a lot of systems, first install on a test system normally and check whether the partitions are aligned or not. If aligned, you don't need to use a separate tool for partitioning.

 

[eatup]

So, once Windows 7 correctly aligns the partitions, the second partition onwards can be reformatted indefinitely by XP without affecting the alignment? How would I check for correct alignment using only the system commands available in Windows 7/XP?

 

[Anshad Edavana]

So, once Windows 7 correctly aligns the partitions, the second partition onwards can be reformatted indefinitely by XP without affecting the alignment?

You can format any partitions infinite times but don't use XP "Disk Management" to delete or create new partitions. You can use freeware partition tools like "Partition Wizard" , "AOMEI Partition Assistant" , "PartitionGuru"etc to manage partitions.

The easiest way to check whether a partition is aligned or not is to use "PartitionGuru".

Recover deleted files, Partition manager and Windows backup - PartitionGuru

In the tools menu there is an option named "4 KB Partition Alignment Detection".

 

[eatup]

Next question: Windows XP chkdsk and defrag, will they work as intended in the above dual-boot setup, or must I now do those tasks entirely from Windows 7?

 

[Anshad Edavana]

Windows XP chkdsk and defrag, will they work as intended in the above dual-boot setup

Yes, they will work. Alignment issue only exist with partition creation - it is all about the starting sector of a partition.