Preparing Advanced Format hard drives for Microsoft Windows installations on HP Business Notebook PCs, Workstations, and Desktop PCs

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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 enhanced
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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, 5, and 10.
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If you wish to perform an unattended deployment for an aligned partition in a RAID configuration,
you can use DiskPart or ImageX as long as the RAID volume had been set up before creating
partitions and applying the image.
Using third-party deployment tools
Deploying an OS that is Advanced Format-aware (such as Windows 7) with a third-party deployment
tool that is not Advance Format-aware may result in misalignment. Moreover, if you were to boot to
an OS such as Linux or DOS, the partitioning tool may not be Advanced Format-aware in that
particular environment.
Contact the vendor for requirements for running their deployment tool.
Enhancing performance with many small writes (as with ImageX)
While Windows 7 SP1 and WinPE 3.1 are already optimized, Microsoft Knowledge Base article
KB982018 addresses performance degradation associated with a Windows 7 or WinPE 3.0 system
performing many small writes to an Advanced Format drive. For example, using the ImageX
command-line tool while booted to WinPE to apply a Windows image (.wim file) to an Advanced
Format drive would take significantly longer than applying the same image to a traditional hard drive.
To optimize Windows 7 performance, you should apply the KB982018 hotfix to your HP system, as
described in the article.
For WinPE 3.0, IT professionals can install KB982018 by following the procedure described in
Appendix B: Procedure for installing KB982018 into WinPE 3.0.
Validating partition alignment
This section outlines the following options for validating partition alignment:
 Using the Unattended Advanced Format Hard Disk Information Tool
 Using Microsoft DiskExt (for Windows XP or later platforms)
 Using the Windows Management Information Command-line (WMIC) utility (for Windows XP or
later platforms)
 Using DiskPart (for Windows 7 platforms)
Sample calculations are also provided.
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Compared to a scenario with misaligned drives
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Ultimately, alignment depend on stripe-unit size; however, 1 MB (2,048 sectors) alignment fits most RAID stripe-unit sizes.