Preparing Advanced Format hard drives for Microsoft Windows installations on HP Business Notebook PCs and desktop PCs - White Paper

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Preparing Advanced Format hard drives

for Microsoft Windows installations on HP

Business Notebook PCs and Desktop PCs

Technical white paper

Table of contents

Executive summary ............................................................................................................................... 2

Identifying an Advanced Format drive .................................................................................................... 2

What does the Advanced Format drive mean to you? .............................................................................. 3

Important tips ...................................................................................................................................... 5

Encrypting drives ............................................................................................................................. 5

Installing Windows Vista (prior to SP1), Windows XP or Windows 2000 images .................................... 5

Creating a 1 MB-aligned partition ...................................................................................................... 6

Extending the partition during a Windows XP image deployment .......................................................... 6

Aligning drives in a RAID configuration .............................................................................................. 7

Using third-party deployment tools ..................................................................................................... 7

Replacing a drive on a Windows 2000 platform ................................................................................. 7

Enhancing performance with many small writes (as with ImageX) .......................................................... 7

Validating partition alignment ............................................................................................................... 8

Using DiskExt ................................................................................................................................... 9

Using WMIC ................................................................................................................................... 9

Using Diskpart ................................................................................................................................. 9

Sample validation .......................................................................................................................... 10

Phase-in of Advanced Format drives ..................................................................................................... 11

Frequently asked questions ................................................................................................................. 12

Hard drive deployment decision tree for managed IT ......................................................................... 14

Appendix A: Technical background ..................................................................................................... 15

Partition alignment ......................................................................................................................... 15

Why alignment helps ...................................................................................................................... 16

For more information .......................................................................................................................... 17

Summary of content (17 pages)

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Preparing Advanced Format hard drives for Microsoft Windows installations on HP Business Notebook PCs and Desktop PCs Technical white paper Table of contents Executive summary............................................................................................................................... 2 Identifying an Advanced Format drive .................................................................................................... 2 What does the Advanced Format drive mean to you? ................
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Executive summary Designed for both SMB/enterprise users and consumers, this white paper provides instructions for preparing an Advanced Format hard drive for a Microsoft® Windows® installation on an HP Business Notebook or Desktop PC, or Retail Point-of-Sale (POS) system. Historically, hard disk drives (HDDs) have used 512-byte sectors; however, this sector size is now limiting HDD capacity.
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Figure 1: HDD label featuring the Advanced Format logo What does the Advanced Format drive mean to you? This section outlines a range of scenarios involving the use of Advanced Format drives and describes actions that should be taken to optimize performance in each case. These actions typically depend on the OS being used.
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Windows 7 Windows Vista SP1 or later Windows Vista prior to SP1 Windows XP Windows 2000 Linux FreeDOS POSReady 2009 or WEPOS Table 1.
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E You should first install the image and then run the Paragon Partition Alignment Tool to ensure partitions are aligned. Note: If you are downgrading your PC to Windows XP or Windows Vista, you are impacted since these OSs are not Advanced Format-aware. F Before beginning the re-imaging, ensure that partitions on your Advanced Format drive are aligned (see Validating partition alignment). To optimize performance with Windows 7 or WinPE, apply Microsoft Knowledge Base article 982018.
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Creating a 1 MB-aligned partition By default, Windows Vista (SP1 and later) and Windows 7 create partitions that are 1 MB-aligned. If desired, the Microsoft Diskpart utility can be used as follows to create a 1 MB-aligned partition: diskpart select disk 0 clean create partition primary [align=1024] select partition 1 exit where align=1024 is used for Windows Vista (prior to SP1), Windows XP or Windows 2000.
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Aligning drives in a RAID configuration If two or more Advanced Format drives have been configured for RAID, running the Paragon Partition Alignment Tool on these drives aligns partitions at 2,048 sectors. Since a starting offset of 2,048 supports most stripe-unit sizes, performance would be enhanced4 due to the elimination of redundant disk operations. Running the Paragon Partition Alignment Tool ensures support for the stripe-unit sizes associated with most RAID configurations, including RAID 0, 1, and 5.
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This issue has been addressed in Microsoft Knowledge Base article 982018. The typical user should apply the associated hotfix as needed; IT professionals can follow the procedure described below. Important The following procedure is intended for the IT professional. Perform the following steps apply the hotfix: 1. Download the Windows PE hotfix to your c: drive from the Microsoft Support site at http://support.microsoft.com/hotfix/KBHotfix.aspx?kbnum=982018&kbln=en-us. 2.
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Using DiskExt 1. After the operating system has been installed, download the DISKEXT utility from http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896648; install. 2. Run diskext from the Windows command line. 3. Identify the Partition Starting Offset value of each partition and divide by 4096. If the value is exactly divisible, the partition is aligned. Using WMIC 1. After the operating system has been installed, run wmic from the Windows command line. 2.
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Sample validation The example shown in Table 3 shows the sizes and offsets associated with four partitions. All eight values must be divisible by 4,096. Table 3.
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Phase-in of Advanced Format drives There is no set cut-over date for the introduction of Advanced Format drives into new HP Business Notebook or Desktop PCs, or Retail POS systems; instead, drives will be phased in, as shown in Table 4. Note the following caveats:  While Advanced Format drives are initially being phased in, multi-unit shipments may include both Advanced Format and conventional (512-byte sector) drives.  HDD suppliers are not ramping up Advanced Format drive production at the same time.
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Frequently asked questions I am not sure I have an Advanced Format drive. What should I do? Even if you are not sure you have an Advanced Format drive, you can still follow the procedures described in this white paper. Changing your installation methods to accommodate Advanced Format-compatibility does not negatively impact a drive with 512-byte sectors. I’m an IT professional.
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Why did HP choose to support emulation rather than drives with 4-KB native sector format? While this was considered, the existing system infrastructure has been designed around a logical 512-byte sector – notably the hard disk boot device. The resources needed to update the environment would have been vast; for example, a BIOS update would be required for every system. Moreover, some operating systems do not support booting to 4-KB native drives.
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Hard drive deployment decision tree for managed IT The following decision tree for managed IT applies to 2011 models: Notes 1. WinPE: Microsoft Windows Preinstallation Environment 2. For more information on creating the image (including driver requirements), refer to this white paper. You can create the image on a drive with 512 byte or 4 KB sectors. 3. Use the Windows Automated Installation Kit (AIK).
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Appendix A: Technical background Since standards were introduced in 1956, industry-standard HDDs have used 512-byte sectors on their internal media. However, this relatively small sector size constrains storage capacity and has also caused manufacturing capabilities to reach a limit.
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In both scenarios, the drive reads the data from the media, modifies the old data with the new data and then rewrites the modified data to the media. Depending on the rotational speed of the drive, this could add 16 – 22 milliseconds to a write. Read performance is not impacted; the drive reads the whole 4 KB of data into drive memory and only sends out the data sector(s) needed. Why alignment helps Alignment issues with older operating systems are based on the starting point of partitions.
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For more information Microsoft KB article 982018 http://support.microsoft.com/kb/982018 Information on AIK for Windows 7 http://technet.microsoft.com/enus/library/dd349343(WS.10).aspx AIK for Windows 7 download http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/detai ls.aspx?FamilyID=696dd665-9f76-4177-a81139c26d3b3b34&displaylang=en Walkthrough: Create a Bootable Microsoft Windows PE RAM Disk on CD-ROM http://technet.microsoft.com/enus/library/dd799303(WS.10).