Preparing Advanced Format hard drives for Microsoft Windows installations on HP Business Notebook PCs and desktop PCs - White Paper (Rev 3)

Enhancing the performance of small writes

Performance degradation can occur on a Windows 7 or WinPE platform that performs many small

writes to an Advanced Format drive. For example, using the ImageX command-line tool 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.

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. Unzip the download file by double-clicking on it.

3. The Windows6.1-KB982018-x86.MSU file should appear in your c: drive. Expand this file:

a. Launch the command prompt with Administrator rights.

b. At the prompt, enter the following:

expand.exe c:\Windows6.1-KB982018-x86.MSU –f:*.* c:\

4. Select StartAll ProgramsWindows OPK or Windows AIK.

5. Right-click Deployment Tools Command Prompt and then select Run as administrator.

6. At the prompt, expand the Windows PE image by mounting boot.wim to be updated into a

location by entering the following:

imagex.exe /mountrw c:\winpe_x86\ISO\sources\boot.wim 1

c:\winpe_x86\mount

7. Create a scratch directory:

mkdir c:\winpe_x86\sandbox

8. Apply the hotfix to your boot.wim image:

Dism.exe /image=c:\winpe_x86\mount /ScratchDir=c:\winpe_x86\sandbox

/Apply-Unattend=c:\Windows6.1-KB982018-x86.xml

9. Commit the Windows PE image by un-mounting boot.wim to be updated into a location by

entering the following:

imagex.exe /unmount /commit c:\winpe_x86\mount