Installing Windows XP on Advanced Format drive

I wish to install Windows XP on an Advanced Format drive. Suppose I partition and format the drive using Windows XP Disk Management tool and align the partitions using some aligning tool, will I be able to run Windows XP SP3 setup on an ALREADY-ALIGNED partition? I am not sure if WinXP+SP3 will install on an AF drive that has ALIGNED partitions. I do not wish to perform the partition aligning process AFTER installing WinXP on an UNALIGNED partition.

Thank you for your time.

You should be able to install Windows XP on the drive without any problems.  The real problem begins if you don’t align the partition.  The drive’s read/write will slow down to a crawl.  Also, you should only create one partition on the drive.

Hello Bill_S.

I will try to install XP and let you know how it goes. But first, I have to find a way to properly align the partitions on my drive. I can’t get WD Align to ‘SEE’ the unaligned partitions on my WD10EZEX. Once I sort out that issue first, I will try installing XP and post an update here.

Thank you for your time.

You could use GParted to create partitions on mebibyte boundaries. Then install Windows XP.

http://gparted.sourceforge.net/

Hello everyone.

I successfully installed Windows XP SP3 on a WD Blue WD10EZEX Advanced Format drive. I was doubtful if Windows XP setup would run properly on an aligned partition AND on a 1 TB capacity drive.

I was able to create aligned partitions using ‘Acronis True Image WD Edition’ , which is available for download on WD website. The ‘Add New Disk’ option allows creating primary/extended partitions that are properly aligned.

WD Align Tool is unable to detect unaligned partitions on WD10EZEX model

WD Align (Version: 2.0.111) publish date is January 2012.
Acronis True Image (Version: 14192) publish date is May 2012.

fzabkar : I haven’t tried GParted yet. But, I don’t see any reason why it shouldn’t work.

Thanks for your help guys.