Installing Microsoft Windows on HP Workstations with Advanced Format Hard Drives

Introduction
The hard disk drive (HDD) industry is migrating from the traditional 512-byte sectors to 4096-byte
sectors. Drives with the larger sector size are known as Advanced Format (AF) drives. Some versions
of the Microsoft Windows operating system may experience significant performance degradation if
they are installed on AF drives without proper alignment of the disk partitions on the drive. This paper
gives some general assistance in avoiding these performance issues when installing a Windows
operating system (OS) on HP Personal Workstations.
Identifying an Advanced Format drive
You can identify an AF drive by using the HP Advanced Format Hard Drive Information Tool, or by
checking the label on the drive for the Advanced Format logo (Figure 1).
Figure 1: HDD label showing the Advanced Format logo
Installing Windows on Advanced Format drives
While it is possible to realign disk partitions after the OS has been installed, HP does not recommend
it, due to the possibility of data loss. The HP recommended procedure is to create the HDD partitions,
use an alignment tool to ensure the partitions are properly aligned with the sector boundaries, and
then install the OS. HP recommends the Paragon Partition Alignment Tool to align the partitions.
Windows 7 with Service Pack 1 (SP1) or later and Windows Vista™ with SP1 or later are Advanced
Format-aware, so installations using Microsoft media should not require realignment, although you
should review Microsoft Knowledge Base article 982018 for updates to Windows 7 to improve
performance with AF drives.
Installing Windows using HP Recovery media
Windows 7: If you use HP Personal Workstation recovery media for Windows 7 with SP1 or later, no
further action is needed. The partitions will be correctly aligned, and the KB 982018 updates will be
in the final OS image.
Windows Vista: HP Workstation recovery media cannot be used to install Windows Vista on AF
drives because the partitioning and installation steps cannot be easily separated. You can install
Windows Vista from Microsoft media or other sources using the guidelines above.
Windows XP: HP recovery media can be used to install Windows XP on HP Personal Workstations,
but manual intervention is required to ensure proper partition alignment. Follow these steps: