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| New HD sector size may impact XP users |
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| romshark:
So does that mean, for the files I copied from home server and XP system (my arcade game and console game files, and some TV shows and Animes), I should move them to my C drive then back to my D drive so that my files are written correctly? :dunno |
| MonMotha:
No. Moving around files makes no difference. The issue is that the entire primary partition and file SYSTEM it contains is not aligned for a 4096 byte sector boundary by default on XP. The tool WD ships with the drive will move the entire partition (and the filesystem it contains) for you to line everything up in a manner that will get the best performance possible. Vista/7/Linux will still do better than XP since it will ask the drive for its sector size and attempt to merge IO operations into suitable sizes whereas XP just assumes a 512 byte sector for its IO scheduling and optimization. However, the unaligned partition makes things even worse since it results in lots of unaligned accesses for larger requests under XP, and that's something you can fix reasonably easily. |
| romshark:
Just to make sure, I am running the drive primarily on Windows 7. I only used XP to copy some files to the drive, then put it back in. That's why I was asking if transferring to C then back to D using Windows 7 would cause it to be written correctly, or if any course of action should be taken on my part. Thanks for your help so far, though. |
| MonMotha:
This all has to do with where the partition is located on the disk. This is set at the time the partition is created (which would generally be when you installed the OS on it or initially "formatted" it if it doesn't have the OS on it). If the partition was created with Win7, you should be good as Win7 is aware of 4096 byte sector drives. If you created the partition with XP, then it probably needs to be moved for optimal performance. What subsequently accesses the filesystem has no bearing on this. XP may generate some sub-optimal IO schedules compared to Win7 even if the partition is 4096 byte aligned, but this would only affect accesses performed under XP. Subsequent accesses to the same data under Win7 won't be affected. |
| BobA:
Looks like new 3 TB drives are not going to work with many old windows systems. Extreme Tech Link |
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