1TB WD10EARS reported as "Non-Advanced Format" drive from WD Align utility

#1

I got this 1T EARS Green Caviar drive and using the utility as suggested on the sticker on it, as i itend to use it as multi partitioned under both XP and 7, reports that the drive is a Non Advanced Format drive …

i restored some acronis backups on it after i partitioned it and everything seemed normal, Now trying to restore one last backup but despite it being smaller it takes forever to complete … it would copy a single medium size or small size file for ages …, i had to cancel restoring …

  • Is there a WD align tool by acronis too?

  • are there other aligning and alignment check - report tools out there?

#2

  • why is the drive reported as Non Advanced Format drive ?

  • is it properly pre-aligned from factory?

  • other tools to properly align the drive (without affecting data and paritions) ?

#3
  • is this common to other EARS drives users ??
#4

I have exactly the same problem with my 1TB WD10EARS Drive.  First I cloned my existing Drive with the Acronis True Image WD Edition and then the WD Align utility reports “NON-ADVANCED FORMAT”

-Anyone have a clue about this?

#5

mine was designated as “Non Advanced Format drive” sine i first pluged it in, before doing anything with the drive ( this didnt sound exactly right LOL )

#6

right now this drive is too slow under XP x86. I write a CD faster that it takes for 600mb files to write on this drive. Writing 2g of files also takes ages when at the same i would had burn two DVDs with those files

#7

i cant find any proper official info about this drive important details and performance and its complicated usage starts to become annoying

#8

WDAlign utility does not detect actual disk format - it just check disk model name.

I had the same problem with my HDD.

Solution is very simple - open script file script_common_WD_offset_0.psl with notepad and add several lines corresponding to your HDD model into subroutine “is_wd_drive” at the end of file.

Then start wdalign utility again…

Good luck!

#9

Thank you …

will check if my fw is included in this list

 i wonder how come WD hasnt arranged an updating system for this script to include the latest drives and firmwares

  • Can i align with this utiliy and keep data intact ? …
#10

Are third party defraggers such as Diskeeper or Perfectdisk compatible with advanced format disks?

#11

Thank you Wadja . This worked. Data remained intact and drive got aligned. Seem to work faster in Win7 than XP .  I wonder if they fixed the script by now.

#12

good question

#13

Hi,i m a system builder & deal in selling machines for video editing…Recently i bought 10 WD10EARS Hard drives as i m a system builder…at the time of installation i found it to be doing at snails pace…it took 40 minutes for an install of windows xp sp2 on following configuration…Gigabyte GA-G41MT-ES2L motherboard,intel core 2 duo 2.66-3mb cache,Kingston 1333 DDR3 Ram,Liteon DVD-RW,Cooler master 400w SMPS…al brand new…it was frustrating & irritating & i guessed something was wrong…so keeping everything else same i changed hard drive & used an old  WD 1tb with 16mb cache which i have been using,which is supposedly slower than this one…but hurrah installation was completed in flat 20 minutes…i thought there must be something wrong with this new one so opened another new one  & installed windows on it,but it was same story…40 minutes…opened another new one,but same time again…40 minutes…well,then i created partitions & copied a 40 gb folder from old HDD on one partition of new HDD…copying took 11 minute,then i copied same 40 gb folder from one partition on new HDD toanother partition  on same HDD…it took 25 minutes…This all was tried on 3 brand new HHD’s with same result…so what is wrong with much aclaimed 64 mb ecofriendly etc etc…even customer care at WD couldn’t give satisfactory solution,one of them told me to put jumper at no. 5 & 6…but no improvement…i was feeling like i m using an old P4 with 1.6 ghz cpu machine…can WD solve this problem.

#14

Prakash, could you try experimenting with different partition offsets until you find the optimal alignment? See this thread for discussion:

http://community.wdc.com/t5/Desktop/Problem-with-WD-Advanced-Format-drive-in-LINUX-WD15EARS/td-p/6395

One can gain performance increases of as much as 5x with correct alignment (or, to put it another way, 5x performance losses if the alignment is not right).

You just need a partitioning tool that lets you decide where the partition starts at individual sector level.

#15

Where can I find this script? : script_common_WD_offset_0.psl