Use Align tool on existing black drives

After reading all these message about how to use the tool, I still do not know if I can use it on an existing drive.

I have a new black caviar drive that I have important data copied to. Data retrieving is about 1 mb /sec.  It would take about a week to finish.  It is the latest Black Caviar 1T. 

My question is, 'can I use the align tool on this drive without destroying any data? 

Thanks in advance,.

The align tool is only for Advanced Format drives. What is the model number of your drive?

Those speeds are very slow, but I wonder if something else may be your issue. Have you tried replacing your SATA cable? Have you made sure that you have nothing running in the backround that might be slowing down your system?

This is the WD1002FAEX model,   Ran the Advanced Format align tool.  It says that "doesn’t support partition alignment’.

It writes fast but reading is about 1m /sec, the average speed for other eariler black drives was about 30m/sec.   I switched this drive with another black drive, the same thing happened to the WD1002 drive, with the swapped one performing as expected. 

Since I loaded my archive files on this drive, retrieving data from this drive is an annoyance with speed slower than a floppy.

The align tool also did not recongize the other drives, came back with the same message "doesn’t support partition alignment.’

This drive costs more than the other model but perform like a floppy.  It only happened when trying to read data.  The align tool is doing nothing. 

The instructions and document are full of technical jargons for CYA but did not answer a few basic questions for the average customers who did not have spare time to keep up with the latest new stuff. 

At this time, I don’t know what to do except to buy a cheaper drive and spend a week and a half to clone the drive.

Please advise.

Did you run check disk and defrag the drive, yet?

I did a low level format, then use partition magic to create one logical drive,  Since I got the OEM drive, documentation is on-line only. 

The other IT(the 1000 version) black  disk drives were initialized the same way, and they work faultlessly. 

The curious thing is that the align tool did not recognize these (including the other black Drives) as Advanced Format Drives,  (also used low level format then partition magic).

My other XP server would not even rocognized the black 1002 version, it went into never never land.  I could not even get out of the boot screen.

Question:  would the low level format did something to the drive? 

What would be the proper procedure to do after physically attached cable/power to the drive?

Thanks.

WD1002FAEX is not an advanced format drive. It is however a SATA 6GB/s drive, so if your board doesn’t support that option you may need to pin it to use the slower speed or odd things may continue to occur.

Looks like this is not the align tool issue.  I can look for other causes. 

I appreciate all answers.  Thanks you all.