Advanced formating on WD10EALX?

[CougTek]

Anyone knows if the Western Digital WD10EALX (1TB, SATA 6Gbps) has the advanced formating or the older 512KB sectors? I have to build a new computer with Windows XP on it and it's the only drive I have in stock. Speed will suck if it has the new sector size.

 

[time]

Speed will suck if it has the new sector size.

Why will it suck? Aren't you planning to align the start of each partition? NTFS will use 4kB blocks by default.

 

[CougTek]

Yes, but I would rather not have to realign the drive. Because when she will change to Windows 7, I'll certainly forget that I realigned the first sector and I won't think about restoring it to its original state.

It's just too much trouble.

 

[time]

Now I'm really confused. Wouldn't you just leave it set to the 1MiB offset that Windows 7 uses?

Why not create the partitions with a Windows 7 install, then abort and install Windows XP?

 

[Bozo]

You will need to reformat to install Windows 7 anyway. There is no upgrade path from XP.

 

[LunarMist]

I have not noticed the supposed slowdown in XP with the advancing format drives, but I format at 32kb and don't boot off of them. I'm not sure why you are making that into such a big deal. It is the backside of 2011 now, and AF is the standard to squeeze in extra bits and reduce reliability.

 

[Chewy509]

To the original question, according to the spec sheet, it's 512byte sectors.

Formatted Capacity: 1,000,204 MB
User Sector Count: 1,953,525,169

Therefore 1,000,204,000,000 bytes / 1,953,525,169 sectors = 512 bytes/sector

Source:
http://www.wdc.com/wdproducts/library/SpecSheet/ENG/2879-701277.pdf

 

[LunarMist]

Assuming those specs are correct, which are often not.

 

[LunarMist]

Assuming those specs are correct, which are often not.

 

[Chewy509]

Assuming those specs are correct, which are often not.

Totally agree, that there are often mistakes in spec sheets. However since this series of drives also come in PATA models (at lower capacities), it would make sense that these are 512byte sector drives due to the PATA factor.

But since we know WDC naming scheme leave a lot to be desired, it's possible that they could all be different drives, just labeled as the same within the same family...

 

[LunarMist]

Did we ever find out if it has the advancing format or not?

 

[CougTek]

It's not. Windows XP was snappy on it and I didn't have to move the first sector. Chewy was right.