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

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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. Older applications and games
would not be able to run, while there would be no performance advantage for a customer. Thus, HP
elected to not pursue this approach at this time.
Where can I build an Advanced Format drive-aware image?
As long as it is validated, you can create a custom image on either a conventional drive or an
Advanced Format drive.
Is there any value to using the Paragon Partition Alignment Tool with a solid state drive (SSD)?
Many modern SSDs feature an internal memory configuration that corresponds to 4-KB sectors.
SSDs memory cells degrade over time, following a large number of write operations; thus, if partitions
are misaligned, not only will performance be degraded but you also increase the risk of premature
drive failure.
Using the Paragon Partition Alignment Tool to align partitions will eliminate all redundant read/write
operations, thus enhancing drive performance and potentially extending the life of the drive.
I have an image created for a drive with 512-byte sectors that I know is not aligned appropriately for
an Advanced Format drive. Can I use Symantec Ghost to install this image on an Advanced Format
drive?
To prevent a BSOD, follow the Microsoft recommendations provided above (Using other disk imaging
utilities) and then use the following Ghost command line switches:
–align=1MB –szeE
where –szeE forces Ghost to maintain the size of the original partition.