Confirmation on Advance Format Drive

Hello all, I have been searching everywhere for this, I think I found it once before, but lost it when I was moving. I am using a advanced format drive which means I need the 2mb boot partition labelled ef02.
The problem I am having is when it comes to installing grub I was sure that you have to add some sort of line for it to use the ef02 partition.

An Advanced Format drive is one that uses physical sectors that are 4096 bytes in size, rather than the older standard of 512 bytes. Most (in fact, all, the last I heard) such drives present the illusion of using 512-byte sectors for compatibility purposes, though.
The gdisk partition type code of EF02 refers to a BIOS Boot Partition, which holds boot loader code for GRUB on disks that are partitioned using the GUID Partition Table (GPT) partitioning system. Note that this partition is only necessary when using GRUB on a BIOS-booted GPT disk. If you've got an MBR disk or if you're booting in EFI mode, you don't need this partition.
These two issues are entirely unrelated. It's possible to use MBR (which has no equivalent to GPT's BIOS Boot Partition) on an Advanced Format disk, and it's possible to use a BIOS Boot Partition on a disk that's not an Advanced Format model.
As to GRUB installation, you should not need to issue any special command to get it to find the BIOS Boot Partition; it should find it automatically.

Similar Messages

Backup and Restore image fails 3TB Advanced Format Drive Windows 7-32 SP1

Windows native backp fails to create an System Image, or a Complete PC Backup.
This occurs in Windows 7, 64 bit Professional, Windows 7, 32bit Ultimate, Windows Vista Business, 32 bit. It occurs in 6 different computers I've tried. All the backup drives are 3TB. I have tried Seagte USB and Hitachi USB drives. 4 of them. The Windows
7 Ultimate, 32bit machine has SP1. All operating systems are using the current Service Packs, and all of the MS Updates including all of the recommended harware drivers. All of the systems are using the latest BIOS, firmware and OEM drivers as well.
It looks like the issue may be causes by a deficiency in Windows related to the Advanced Format drive spec. All of the computers that qualified had the AF hotfix applied; Advanced Format Drives 512e 4k, Vista
and 2008 - KB2470478, Windows 7, and 2008 R2 KB982018
Error messages follow:
The Backup Failed.
Error message: One of the backup files could not be created. (0x8078002A)
The request could not be perfomed because of an I/O error. (0x8007045D)
This deficiency seems to apply across the board to different hardware manufacturers of external hard drives.
From what I have heard, Western Digital may have a format utility that addresses this issue, but only for WD drives.
Help.

Hi David,
Did you have found any error message？
Check if all the files have been created on the hard drive.
Check the Volume shadow copy service in services window. To check follow these steps:
i.
Click Start and type services.msc in the search box
ii.
Search for the Volume shadow copy service
Make sure the start- up type is automatic. Steps to set the services to automatic
i.
Search for the service
ii.
Right click on the service
iii.
If the service is stopped then Start the service
iv.
Select Properties
v.
And in the Start-up type select Automatic
This is the most definitive answer I can find so am taking this as the answer.
http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en/windowsbackup/thread/889b01be-d333-4fc7-b005-e12b7b236ad7
http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/windowsbackup/thread/444e8ea2-6417-45dc-83d4-f5ae45bbaa02
Thanks,
Jeff
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Recovering Windows 7 with advanced format drive failes without SP1

I have a dv6-2150us and the hard drive failed. I acquired a new drive and ran recovery disks. Unfortunately many features do not work correctly on an advanced format drive in Windows 7 without SP1. The key feature is Windows update does not work which prevents me from upgrading to SP1. I tried many fixes to Windows update and downloaded SP1 from Microsoft's site, but they all fail to install because update fails to run.
Any advice? I tried to install a fresh ISO of Windows 7 SP1 which works fine, but I would rather not pay for an OS I already own. My Windows license key doesn't work with the Windows 7 SP1 install.
This question was solved.
View Solution.

dv6guy,
Did the HP Recovery Discs actually fail to install??? Does the recovered install fail to boot completely or correctly. Or does the recovered install not only have isues with Windows update and/or other software???
If the recovery completes and you can enter Windows please try to use ABR Beta With Windows 7 Support to backup the installed HP OEM SLP key and HP OEM SLP certificate. Once you have these, save the complete ABR folder to an external location, like a USB stick. Next, install Windows 7 SP1 from your fresh ISO. Do not enter a product key when requested and do not allow Windows to try to activate the computer. Now, restore the key and certificate to your fresh Windows 7 SP1 install. Verify that Windows is activated. Post back and let us know if this succeeded or failed
Please see this forum thread entitled How to Install Windows 7 Without the Disc for more on the subject.
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Can an Advanced Format drive be installed in a Time Capsule

I have aTime Capsule 1TB and was interested in upgrading the hard drive. I saw that there are 4TB drives available that are "Advanced Format" Would these drives be able to be used in Time Capsule? Is there any performance issues known? For example would I be able to format the drive as one large partition using the "full drive" or would it be limited to significantly less (like only 3TB).
According to Western Digital (http://wdc.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/5655/~/how-to-install-a-wd-advan ced-format-drive-on-a-non-windows-operating-system):
"Mac OSX:
Mac OSX version 10.4 onwards (Tiger, Leopard and Snow Leopard) can use the GUID Partitioning Table scheme (GPT) which will align an Advanced Format drive correctly. Mac OS versions using Apple Partition Manager (APM) will not align partitions correctly and will not provide optimum performance."
When you format a drive using the Time Capsule reset/reformat utility, does it format the drive using GPT or APM? I think that might answer my question. Then again, maybe it won't.
Thank you for your help.

I do not know about 4TB drives, having never tested one.. but 3TB advanced format is fine. So my guess would be the 4TB would work.. but Apple often set limitations in their firmware.. and since 3TB is the largest they release in any TC.. that tends to be the limit they set.
There is also no guarantee that the drive will spin down.. although spinning up and down every minute can also happen and of course is much worse issue.
What model TC are you trying to do this to?
Format of the drive is GPT.
Hey.. after much googling.. doing your work for you.. I found the last post here.. the guy mentions the sata in the TC works
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3727070?start=0&tstart=0
You will probably need to use 7.6.1 firmware. There are certainly issues on older models with larger drives.. but I managed to shoehorn a 3TB into a Gen 2 and it works with one proviso.. spin down is flakey.. some times yes and sometimes no.. still the actual consumption of a drive spinning is only 2-3W now.
My solution would be.. to connect your internal sata in the TC to esata port.. or even just an extension cable.. a nice power plus data one.. and buy 2TB drives.. which are still better value.. TB/$$ and then you can use any number of drives in sequence.. no hot swap of course. But it is easy to off and on the TC.. then you can have a disk for swapping to store backups offsite.
I should think if you buy an older newertech (I love the paradox) box which fits under the TC you can do a really neat combined unit.

Partition an Advanced Format drive with 4KB sector (for Linux OS only)

I got a brand new WD 1TB drive, model WD10EZEX, I'm upgrading from an old 500 GB drive with Arch running on it, and I'm going to make a fresh Arch install on it.
I suddenly learned about all this Advanced Format issue, with the first units "lying" about physical sector size and all that stuff, which started like 2 years ago and I was not aware of.
I couldn't find a step by step guide to perform the proper formatting for a fresh Linux OS install with 4KB-sector, despite the info is out there scattered in tons of blogs, forums, etc.
I figured out the steps for my simple setup, and I'd like to know if everything is all right. For the ones who already know the steps, can you please go to the bottom of the post, and tell me if the final setup is all right to start the fresh install ?? I reproduce all the steps hoping that this will help other people in the future.
I'll use the whole drive only for an Archlinux install, with one partition for the / and another for /home.
Seems the GPT modern method is the way to go, and the gdisk tool will do the trick. If we are booting from this drive, with GRUB2 in a BIOS system, we must also create a BIOS Boot Partition.
So, with the drive having no partitions at all, and sda being the device name
# gdisk /dev/sda
Command (? for help): p
Disk /dev/sda: 1953525168 sectors, 931.5 GiB
Logical sector size: 512 bytes
Disk identifier (GUID): 6527769B-B4BC-408C-A45B-D2DAA4036620
Partition table holds up to 128 entries
First usable sector is 34, last usable sector is 1953525134
Partitions will be aligned on 2048-sector boundaries
Total free space is 1953525101 sectors (931.5 GiB)
Number Start (sector) End (sector) Size Code Name
we create the 2 MiB BIOS Boot Partition
Command (? for help): n
Partition number (1-128, default 1): 1
First sector (34-1953525134, default = 2048) or {+-}size{KMGTP}: 2048
Last sector (2048-1953525134, default = 1953525134) or {+-}size{KMGTP}: +2M
Current type is 'Linux filesystem'
Hex code or GUID (L to show codes, Enter = 8300): ef02
a 45GB partition to use as /
Command (? for help): n
Partition number (2-128, default 2):
First sector (34-1953525134, default = 6144) or {+-}size{KMGTP}:
Last sector (6144-1953525134, default = 1953525134) or {+-}size{KMGTP}: +45G
Current type is 'Linux filesystem'
Hex code or GUID (L to show codes, Enter = 8300): 8300
Changed type of partition to 'Linux filesystem'
and the rest to use as /home
Command (? for help): n
Partition number (3-128, default 3): 3
First sector (34-1953525134, default = 94377984) or {+-}size{KMGTP}:
Last sector (94377984-1953525134, default = 1953525134) or {+-}size{KMGTP}:
Current type is 'Linux filesystem'
Hex code or GUID (L to show codes, Enter = 8300): 8300
Changed type of partition to 'Linux filesystem'
we can check the setup
Command (? for help): p
Disk /dev/sda: 1953525168 sectors, 931.5 GiB
Logical sector size: 512 bytes
Disk identifier (GUID): 6527769B-B4BC-408C-A45B-D2DAA4036620
Partition table holds up to 128 entries
First usable sector is 34, last usable sector is 1953525134
Partitions will be aligned on 2048-sector boundaries
Total free space is 2014 sectors (1007.0 KiB)
Number Start (sector) End (sector) Size Code Name
1 2048 6143 2.0 MiB EF02 BIOS boot partition
2 6144 94377983 45.0 GiB 8300 Linux filesystem
3 94377984 1953525134 886.5 GiB 8300 Linux filesystem
and everything looks fine, we have the multiples of 8 starting sectors, so we write the changes
Command (? for help): w
Final checks complete. About to write GPT data. THIS WILL OVERWRITE EXISTING PARTITIONS!!
Do you want to proceed? (Y/N): y
OK; writing new GUID partition table (GPT) to /dev/sda.
The operation has completed successfully.
now we need to give the / and /home partitions a format, I choose ext4 and ask for a 4096 block size just in case we have a "lying" unit (not my case but I prefer to write down the most general command)
# mkfs.ext4 -b 4096 /dev/sda2
mke2fs 1.42.6 (21-Sep-2012)
Filesystem label=
OS type: Linux
Block size=4096 (log=2)
Fragment size=4096 (log=2)
Stride=0 blocks, Stripe width=0 blocks
2949120 inodes, 11796480 blocks
589824 blocks (5.00%) reserved for the super user
First data block=0
Maximum filesystem blocks=4294967296
360 block groups
32768 blocks per group, 32768 fragments per group
8192 inodes per group
Superblock backups stored on blocks:
32768, 98304, 163840, 229376, 294912, 819200, 884736, 1605632, 2654208,
4096000, 7962624, 11239424
Allocating group tables: done
Writing inode tables: done
Creating journal (32768 blocks): done
Writing superblocks and filesystem accounting information: done
and the same thing for /dev/sda3 .
Check with gdisk and parted that everything is fine, is this all right to start the install ??
# gdisk -l /dev/sda
GPT fdisk (gdisk) version 0.8.5
Partition table scan:
MBR: protective
BSD: not present
APM: not present
GPT: present
Found valid GPT with protective MBR; using GPT.
Disk /dev/sda: 1953525168 sectors, 931.5 GiB
Logical sector size: 512 bytes
Disk identifier (GUID): 6527769B-B4BC-408C-A45B-D2DAA4036620
Partition table holds up to 128 entries
First usable sector is 34, last usable sector is 1953525134
Partitions will be aligned on 2048-sector boundaries
Total free space is 2014 sectors (1007.0 KiB)
Number Start (sector) End (sector) Size Code Name
1 2048 6143 2.0 MiB EF02 BIOS boot partition
2 6144 94377983 45.0 GiB 8300 Linux filesystem
3 94377984 1953525134 886.5 GiB 8300 Linux filesystem
# parted /dev/sda
GNU Parted 3.1
Using /dev/sda
Welcome to GNU Parted! Type 'help' to view a list of commands.
(parted) print
Model: ATA WDC WD10EZEX-00R (scsi)
Disk /dev/sda: 1000GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/4096B
Partition Table: gpt
Disk Flags:
Number Start End Size File system Name Flags
1 1049kB 3146kB 2097kB BIOS boot partition bios_grub
2 3146kB 48.3GB 48.3GB ext4 Linux filesystem
3 48.3GB 1000GB 952GB ext4 Linux filesystem
Last edited by karamaz0v (2012-12-06 06:39:45)

Your partitions look fine from an Advanced Format point of view. The test is simple: Are all your partitions' start points, as measured in sectors, divisible by 8? Yours are.
karamaz0v wrote:what confused me a bit, was that I saw a lot of setups with the BIOS boot partition, and also a 200 MB EFI one. Having a BIOS system, I think I don't need the EFI one.
Some people do this because they're unclear of their requirements. Others do it because they want to have the option of switching boot modes between BIOS/legacy and EFI. With both types of boot loader installed, you can choose on a boot-by-boot basis which way to start the computer, assuming it supports both boot modes.

Do Advanced Format drives work in Lion?

I have a "new" mid 2009 MacBook, and I'm replacing everything on it so I can use it for school. I want to use Lion, and decided to get a new hard drive to compliment the upgrade.I ordered a WD Scorpio Black drive...but just realized it had Advanced Format in the description. I noticed alot of reviewers said it worked with their MacBook Pro's, but dont know if they succesfully got AF to work or not...sounds like there would be a serious performance hit if they couldnt get it to work.Does Lion have any way to format the drive in AF?Is it even necessary?

Advanced format has nothing to do with the format of the drive.
Advanced format means they switched from the 512 byte to 4k byte per sector.
Advanced Format is a generic term pertaining to any sector format used to store data on the magnetic disks in hard disk drivesthat exceeds 512 to 520 bytes per sector. Advanced Format is also considered a milestone technology in the history of hard-drive storage, where data has been processed in 512-byte increments since the inception of the hard-disk drive in 1956. Changing the sector format convention to larger data sectors, such as the 4,096-byte structure used in the first generation of Advanced Format technologies, uses the storage surface area more efficiently for large files but less efficiently for smaller files, while enabling the integration of stronger error correction algorithms to maintain data integrity at higher storage densities.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Format

Toshiba Satellite: upgrade to Advanced Format hard drive?

Hi! I have a Toshiba Satellite. My hard drive is on the fritz, so I want to upgrade the hard drive. I called Toshiba support and asked what kind of hard drives I could use. They said "Any hard drive that isn't Advanced Format".
So I buy a new hard drive (that has no mention of being Advanced Format). It arrives, and (surprise) it says "Advanced Format" on the drive itself.
My question: is it okay to use Advanced Format drives on a Satellite? I know I'll probably have to update the BIOS, but beyond that, is there anything special about a Satellite that would cause it to have problems?
Toshiba Satellite L775D-S7222
Windows 7
New hard drive I want to use: "WD Black". WD5000BPKT (It's a Western Digital brand.)
I intend to "clone" my entire system, windows and all, to the new drive. I know I will have to run a "realignment" tool. I plan to use WD's cloning tool, which can both clone and realign.
http://support.wdc.com/product/downloaddetail.asp?swid=119&wdc_lang=en
edit: For reference, there's an excellent knowledge base article here:
http://forums.toshiba.com/t5/System-Recovery-and-Recovery/Errors-after-installing-new-quot-advanced-...
I guess my question is "Should I avoid AF completely" and try to return the hard drive?
Solved!
Go to Solution.

Satellite L775D-S7222
"WD Black". WD5000BPKT
Just for the record, the WD5000BEKT does not use advanced-format technology.
WD Scorpio Black
I called Toshiba support and asked what kind of hard drives I could use. They said "Any hard drive that isn't Advanced Format"
Toshiba's tech support is correct in the case when you restore the hard disk to its original out-of-the-box contents using Toshiba recovery media. It's likely you will have the sort of problems I have described in this message.
After Restoring to New Hard Disk, No Windows Update - a Fix
I know of no reason you should have difficulty when you follow the instructions from Western Digital for cloning to an AFT drive.
-Jerry

SOLARIS OS Support for Advance Format Hard Drives

Hello,
I am fairly new to the UNIX Operating System so I'm hoping that someone can help me. Does Solaris support the new Advance Format hard drives (4k sector boundaries)? I cannot find any mention of the advance format drive in the Oracle literature. I believe, based on my recent reading that Open Source Solaris depends on ZFS to handle the support of the new 4kbyte sector size.
Thank you in advance for any information you can supply.
Steve

Moderator Action:
This post has been moved to the Solaris 10 forum.
@ O.P.,
You originally posted your inquiry to the Clustering forum, which has nothing to do with the topic of disk cluster size.
Glance at the documentation for Oracle Cluster 4.0 to see what clustering is all about.

PS3 and Advanced Format Issues (scorpio blue 500gb)

I just bought a scorpio blue 500gb that has advanced format i.e. 4k sectors and it is not working correctly with my PS3 slim with 4.75 firmware. I believe it's due to the advanced format tech used on the drive. Symptoms are constant corruption, PS3 rebuilds the database often after a cold start.very slow boot up sometimes, not everytime, but sometimes the drive indicator is solid for a long time and the screenstays black, sometimes it won't boot at all. I put a older scorpio blue 320 from 2008 and all the symptoms went away. The 500gb seems to work just fine in a USB enclosure when I format it on windows. Is there something special that needs to be done to these advanced format drives for the PS3?

Hi,
As a recommendation, check on the PS3 forums to see if they have any specific information about this. I haven't seen any post about this on the community.

Advanced Format Hard Drive not recognized by HP DV6000 Controller

Hello,
I have an HP DV 6000 laptop (6276 I think, I'm at work can't check) that came preinstalled with a Western Digital 160gb 1.5gb/s 5400 RPM drive (Vista) that failed a couple of weeks ago. So i bought a Western Digital 750 GB WD Black SATA III 7200 RPM 16 MB drive to replace it. I read about people having some problems with Advanced Drive Format hard drives not being recognized by their controller, but also read that depending on the controller and specific Dv6000 model laptop they had-one wouldn't run into problems.
Well sure enough, when attempting to install Windows 7 I received the error that the hard drive was not detected. After researching online I came across an article on WD's site that noted
"Our SATA II hard drives use autospeed negotiation. This enables our SATA II drives to automatically detect the motherboard data transfer rate, making it backward compatible with SATA I data transfer rates. However, some older SATA I controllers are unable to support autospeed negotiation and cannot recognize the drive. This “drive not detected” condition occurs when a chipset is incapable of correctly negotiating the data transfer speed with a SATA II hard drive."
my drive is a SATA ||| but I'm pretty sure it's the same problem. The site goes on to say a fix would be to "purchase and install a third party PCI or PCI-Express Second Generation Serial ATA controller card for your Serial ATA hard drive(s)."
My question(s) are.
1)Is the problem that I am trying to install a Sata ||| hard drive on a laptop with a controller that will only recognize SATA | hard drive?
2) Or is the problem that the hard drive is an Advanced Drive Formatted hard drive and I need to buy a hard drive with out that specification?
3) Or Should I buy a SATA controller card as WD suggests on their website and if so will this definitely allow my laptop's controller to recognize the new hard drive and proceed with the installation?
4)Or Should I just return the hard drive and buy a SATA | non Advanced Drive Format hard drive? (question 2 basically)
Thanks for your help!

Hi @jasmine00
Welcome to the HP Support Forums.
I certainly understand your issue with the drive upgrade. Unfortunately it is a bit of the nature of notebooks, the sacrifice of a large amount of upgradeability, in exchange for compactness and portability. Whenever a new technology comes out, older notebooks are never really going to be easy to upgrade, it at all. Normally the unit as a whole is tested with a set list of hardware, and only those items are supported.
That being said there is this document that could be helpful with your problem.
Preparing Advanced Format hard drives for Microsoft Windows installations on HP Business Notebook PC...
And for your reference:
HP Pavilion dv6000 Notebook PC Maintenance and Service Guide
Malygris1
I work on behalf of HP
Please click Accept as Solution if you feel my post solved your issue, it will help others find the solution.
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Does AirPort Extreme support external drives with Advanced Format (4K) ?

Hi!
I have an AirPort Extreme from 2008 and now i want to use a Raid 1 USB HDD for Time Machine.
The new disks often has the new "Advanced Format" (4K blocks).
Does this APE support such 4k drives?
At the moment i don't have any experience with this new format,
for this reason i don't know if the APE or the hdd case has to support this format.
regards
Sebastian

Sebastian Brandner wrote:
1) I'm using a simple USB Disk, connected to my APE, as Time Machine Backup Volume. This works quite well for about a year.
Yes, for a few folks it does appear to work for a number of days, weeks, or months. But sooner or later, the backups turn up corrupted, often beyond repair. It happens to me about eery 3 months, which seems fairly typical. That's likely why Apple doesn't support it, and nobody should depend on it.
2) The RAID Case shows only a single disk to the connected device, raid 1 handling ist internal and so it's again just a simple usb disk.
Correct. I didn't say otherwise. In a supported location, Time Machine will back up to a hardware RAID set (but not a software one).
3) The link with the supported disks doesn't handle the new disk format 4k. :-/ Maybe the support entry is too old.
Note that it's a 2008 Airport Extreme; that predates the support article by at least a couple of years.
But by all means, call AppleCare if you don't believe the support article.

Can I write to an NTFS formatted drive on a PC Network?

I had a quick question that I am sure someone in this qualified group will be able to answer.
My existing laptop PC for work is about shot, and my company has said that I could replace it with anything (Excellent!). So I'm looking at the 17'' Mac Book Pro (especially now with Boot Camp). I've been a pretty big Mac supporter and have owned one for my personal stuff for 10+ years, so I’m not too worried about the quality of the product,
With a Mac for home and then a PC for work, I’ve never had any problems transferring files, it was always a simple as an email or transfer via a USB flash drive. But at work, we have a PC file server that is running XP (possibly 2000 and I don’t know it if is the “server” version of this software or not), and on my laptop it is mounted as an available network drive. When I’ve done properties view on the drive, I’ve confirmed its an NTFS formatted drive.
So the question is, will the Mac be able to connect, mount, read and WRITE to this drive since it will be mounted as a network drive and NOT as a directly connected drive (which sounds like the cause for the read-only ability in the Bootcamp discussions)? Also, would this be using the SMB feature to connect then, any issues anyone knows about?
Unfortunately for me, the current laptop PC I have is formatted in FAT32 so I can't just solve this with existing hardware and I don't just carry my Dual 2.7 G5 to the office all that often. I know its pretty simple and someone must have done it before.
Here’s an Apple article that is silent on the drive format - http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=19652
Thanks
Dual G5 - 2.7Ghz Mac OS X (10.4.6)

Hi Numbers,
In this situation the format of the volume on the server is less important than the way you connect to it. Windows sharing presents on the network via SMB, which Mac OS X speaks fluently; it doesn't matter too much whether the server's locally connected volume is formatted NTFS or FAT32, as long as it is shared out to the clients.
If you were to try to connect an NTFS-formatted volume DIRECTLY to your Mac, however, you would find that no matter what you did it would show up read-only -- since NTFS permissions are tightly connected to Windows and to Active Directory, it's not possible for Mac OS X to respect them for writing, and so Apple avoids writing to NTFS altogether.
Short answer, you should be fine on your office network. If you want to be sure, borrow a friend's Mac and check it at work.
Good luck!

Western Digital WD20EARS "Advanced Format" - 4k sectors needed

I just purchased a Western Digital WD20EARS which uses "Advanced Format" which to my understanding are 4k sectors rather than 512 byte sectors. To function properly, the partitions need to align with this 4k sector size - like an SSD? Anyway, I found the following references, but wanted to ask here too before I attempt partitioning the hdd: what is the proper process and software to ensure that I do this correctly?
* This post talks about using parted from the shell for the partitioning.
* I've also read in various places to simply start the partition with fdisk in sector mode (hitting 'u') and be sure to start at sector 64 rather than on sector 63. Example. Example 2 (you have to search for the keyword 'linux')
* I've also read to do the same, except to start at sector 2048.
* This post at the centos forum recommends using 'fdisk -H 224 -S 56 /dev/sdX' to "make sure that all possible partitions will be in alignment with the 4K sectors. Any partition you create that way will align the partition with the 4K sectors."
Thanks in advance for any info.
EDIT: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Advanced_Format
Last edited by graysky (2011-08-31 13:12:05)

I just used fdisk (setting both modes 'c' and 'u') and aligned it to sector 2048 - interestingly, in sector mode, the default starting point is not 63 or 64 but 2048 in the current version of fdisk (2.17.2) so it's automatically taking care of the 4k sector size for me. Everything works fast so I'm assuming that it's correct.
Credit to this post.
Here are some reference numbers on three drives
a = Seagate 7200.12 ST31000528AS (1.0 TB) spinning at 7200 RPM
b = WD Black WD1001FALS (1.0 TB) spinning at 7200 RPM
c = WD Green WD20EARS (2.0 TB) spinning at 5900 RPM
# hdparm -Tt /dev/sd[a-c]
/dev/sda:
Timing cached reads: 15512 MB in 1.99 seconds = 7780.21 MB/sec
Timing buffered disk reads: 338 MB in 3.02 seconds = 112.07 MB/sec
/dev/sdb:
Timing cached reads: 15796 MB in 1.99 seconds = 7922.77 MB/sec
Timing buffered disk reads: 308 MB in 3.01 seconds = 102.20 MB/sec
/dev/sdc:
Timing cached reads: 15128 MB in 1.99 seconds = 7586.77 MB/sec
Timing buffered disk reads: 356 MB in 3.01 seconds = 118.08 MB/sec
Not too bad considering the WD20EARS spins ~18 % slower than the other two.
EDIT: This drive also attempts to part the read heads once every 8 seconds which is just horrible. Use hdparm in your /etc/rc.local to disable this 'feature' and likely add life to your hdd:
# echo "hdparm -S 242 /dev/sdX" > /etc/rc.local
EDIT2: Here is a trivial script that detects the presence of this drive on my system and automatically send that hdparm command. Note that I only have a WD20EARS and this script won't work for multiple copies.
#!/bin/bash
test=`fdisk -l | grep 2000.4 | cut -c13-13`
if [ -z "$test" ]; then
echo retarded drive not found, exiting
exit 0
else
echo retarded drive found, fixing lcc
hdparm -S 242 /dev/sd$test
fi
Last edited by graysky (2010-06-27 06:58:30)

Re: Toshiba M10: replacing 7k200 HDD with Advanced Format" 7K750 HDD

Can anyone see any problems with replacing the original Hitachi TravelStar 7K200 (200GB) hard drive, which came in my two-year-old Toshiba Tecra M10-11X, with a so-called "Advanced Format" 7K750 (750GB or perhaps 640GB) hard drive?
Like the original I would like to dual-boot the new drive using three partitions:
* Windows 7 32-bit
* Data
* Windows XP
and would probably clone one disk to the other (increasing the partition sizes!) using v5 of Macrium Reflect.
I've read up on the TravelStar 7K750 specs, the Hitachi Alignment Tool, the Microsoft KnowledgeBase article 982018 "An update that improves the compatibility of Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 with Advanced Format Disks is available", Bit-tech's http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/sto...t-hard-disks/1, and so on, but wonder whether anyone has actually replaced the original hard drive with any Advanced Format disk, and so might have some experience to share?
Thanks!

Hi
I dont have an experience using such Advanced Format" 7K750 HDD but in my opinion it should not be a big problem using such HDD.
The notebook supports SATA interface and if this HDD would also support the SATA controller, then the HDD should be recognized too
But of course this is my personal opinion...

Capture Problem (av-1) - Mac OS Extended formatted drives

I've got a bit of a stumper. I've been trying to capture some video. (I'm backing up all my Hi8 tapes to DVD.) I have no size limit enabled. The time limit is set to 30 minutes. When I finish, FCP stop the capture and creates the capture files. I have one 4.1GB file (Untitled) with the movie and sound and another 780MB file (Untitled-av-1) which is not playable. The movie file plays with quick time and is able to be edited with FCP. But, the other file does nothing. If I delete the second file, the first movie becomes unplayable and uneditable in FCP.
I searched this issue. I do not have Norton AV or any virus protection software. All my drives are formatted MacOS extended.
I don't know why else this extra file is there? Anybody know? I've captured files before and this did not happen. Strangely it's happening now.

Well, you did mention...
so I don't understand why it's (apparently) running into a problem peculiar to FAT32-formatted drives
I kind of had to assume at that point the source drive was the one you formatted as Mac OS Extended two years ago, and the target drive was FAT32. If not, then I'm not sure why you mentioned FAT32 at all.
In that same thinking, error code 0 is directly related to FAT formatted drives.

Confirmation on Advance Format Drive

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