WD Acronis Align says 3T drive aligned on 63

The WD align tool by Acronis says (on XP) my 3T new drive is “aligned” when the starting sector for the partition is sect 63.  Prevously Acronis aligned the drive to start at 2048.  Now it allows amost anything and yet says “aligned.”  How?  Why?  What to do?   I’ve rebooted, reformatted, manually changed the MBR start and ends.  HELP!.

Hello,

Try running zeros to the drive using WD DLG and then try to align it again.

Data Lifeguard Diagnostic for Windows

Could it be that your drive’s firmware doesn’t report that your drive is an Advanced Format model? The ATA Identify Device command has several optional words relating to AF. I would examine them using CrystalDiskInfo.

Crystal does not say “Advanced Format” anywhere.   I don’t see an ATA Identify Device command feature.   What SMART items would indicate AF?

I filled the first 5000 sectors with 0s and started over several times.  Still acts the same way.

Is it possible to have a drive be aligned and start at sector 63?

I assume that all 3T drives  (this one is Mainstream model) are AF.   The Acronis align tool says aligned / not-aligned on the 2nd “expanded capacity” partition depending on the starting sector.

CrystalDiskInfo has a Text Copy feature.

First go to Edit → Copy Option and select Identify Device. Then go to Edit → Copy. This will copy the disk information to the clipboard. Then open up NotePad or whichever word processor ships with your version of Windows, and choose Edit → Paste (or Ctrl-V) to input the clipboard data.

Words 106, 117-118, and 209 of the Identify Device information block are related to Advanced Format.

See Table 29 in Section 7.16.7.1 of the following document:

Working Draft AT Attachment 8 - ATA/ATAPI Command Set (ATA8-ACS):
http://www.t13.org/documents/UploadedDocuments/docs2008/D1699r6a-ATA8-ACS.pdf