"2 TB" drives are really 1.86 TB ones (2*10^9/1024^3) so WinXp don't have troubles with them.
And you have missed the source of trouble. It's not WinXp, it is MBR (master boot record) limitations. The partition offset and the partition sectors number are 4-byte long so you can't address 2+ TB (2^32*512).
You can use 2+ TB HDDs in WinXp if you split it to 2 TB volumes and use corresponding drivers. Both can be done with HDD vendor utilities (Seagate DiscWizard etc).

Cheers! I guess I can start working on it tomorrow then 😁

2 TB works fine (Done that recently). The issues lie with drivers larger than 2 TB.

Also check the manufacturer website for a jumper setting to set the SATA mode from 3 to 2 at least. Worst case, if it's a Seagate or Samsung: SeaTools to the rescue and you turn into any capacity you like. Fancy a brand spanking new ultra fast 32 GB with an IDE interface? No dramas: SeaTools + SATA to IDE adapter to the rescue 🤣

But you should be fine. XP is awesome in the sense that many things just work.

You can use these monster HDDs even with win98 with a commercial patch:
http://rloew.x10host.com/Programs/Patchtb.htm
http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/141013-hard-d … -now-available/

A pretty useful fix 😀

if this is a recent model hard disk then it will have 4KB physical sectors with 512 byte emulation. WinXP doesn't know anything about this, so it will think the sectors really are 512 bytes.
For the best performance, the partitions should be aligned with the physical sectors, but WinXP won't do this correctly on a modern drive. To accomplish this you can use a recent version of gParted, or some other modern partitioning utility. Just enable the option in gparted that offers to align the partitions on a 1MB boundary, and that will do it. You can have WinXP do the formatting, it's just the partition placement which is better handled by gparted.
If you create the partition(s) in WinXP, then typically it places the first partition at the 63rd 512-byte sector, which does not align with the real 4KB sectors on newer hard disks. It will still work, but it won't perform quite as well.

shamino that's interesting!

Do the hard drive specifications tell you if it's a 4K drive?

Is there a way to "check" for this later? Let's say I installed XP on a 2TB drive how could I check it it's been aligned properly? Can you benchmark for it?

When partitioned in Windows 8.1, will it align?

I'd like to read up on that topic, was kinda aware of the issue but because I haven't noticed any performance issue never fully got my head around it.

If your partition isn't aligned and you use WinXp - some (or all) of 512 KB sectors will be read/written at 2 commands. And you will get 13%-50% speed loss.
Use HDD vendors utils to fix this.
Or you can use this.

What about FAT 16 / FAT 32 and DOS / Windows 9x?

I checked my drives and a few of them mention the Advanced Format. One of them even has a jumper for it. Interesting.

Can I align a Windows 9x drive on another computer in a USB drive dock?

AFAIR - the jumper is the Western Digital HDDs "feature". It shifts the 512-bytes sector number to 1 so the first WinXp partition starts from the 65th sector (not 64th) and hits 4-kbytes borders. Still you can easily miss this border with the 1st partition end or with the 2nd partition...
So the best way is not using this jumper and do all alignments manually.
P.S. It looks like you can get the block size and the partition offset with wmic command. "Wmic partition get blocksize, startingoffset, name", then divide the offset to the blocksize. If the result is integer - your partition is aligned...

Too easy 😀

The manufacturers have this really well documented. Going to try this out on my XP machine which has a 2 TB drive in it.

Seagate has other technology for this: http://www.seagate.com/docs/pdf/whitepaper/mb … hnology_faq.pdf

It has software to create an aligned partition but an alignment utility is only available on request. WD has one for download.

Seagate has tried to keep it simple, telling their customers that because of their so-called "SmartAlign", that they don't need to worry about alignment. Maybe that's a good marketing strategy, but I remember some independent tests on some review sites that showed the performance impact still affects their drives if they aren't aligned. I just looked at that link and noticed Seagate is claiming good test results while not aligned, but based on outside reviews, I don't trust their claims.

That wmic command is an interesting method to check the alignment, Unfortunately my modern PC (with 4K drives) isn't in Windows at the moment, but just out of curiosity I tried it on my Pentium 3 (running an old 512 sector disk) and it gave the result of integer 63.

I have one old model 2TB drive with the legacy 512 byte sector size. It was the last 2TB Seagate to use that size of sectors. At one time I was lamenting that I didn't have more, but as it turns out doing proper alignment on modern disks isn't any big deal. It's just something to be aware of when setting up an older OS, but it's easily addressed using newer partitioning utilities that understand the issue.
I think the issue also affects unpatched versions of Vista and maybe even early versions of 7, I'm not sure. So if doing a fresh install with an unpatched install disc, it could affect those OSes also. I think all versions of Windows 8 have it handled, but I wouldn't count on it to fix an already existing partition that it has been asked to install on top of.

shamino wrote:

if this is a recent model hard disk then it will have 4KB physical sectors with 512 byte emulation. WinXP doesn't know anything about this, so it will think the sectors really are 512 bytes.
For the best performance, the partitions should be aligned with the physical sectors, but WinXP won't do this correctly on a modern drive. To accomplish this you can use a recent version of gParted, or some other modern partitioning utility. Just enable the option in gparted that offers to align the partitions on a 1MB boundary, and that will do it. You can have WinXP do the formatting, it's just the partition placement which is better handled by gparted.
If you create the partition(s) in WinXP, then typically it places the first partition at the 63rd 512-byte sector, which does not align with the real 4KB sectors on newer hard disks. It will still work, but it won't perform quite as well.

Is it possible to do this from Windows 7 (including partitioning the drive) and then installing XP onto the drive (in another rig).
Edit: "from Windows 7" I meant using the Windows 7 standard tools for aligning the drive (if these exist).

Tetrium wrote:

Is it possible to do this from Windows 7 (including partitioning the drive) and then installing XP onto the drive (in another rig).
Edit: "from Windows 7" I meant using the Windows 7 standard tools for aligning the drive (if these exist).

Hey, just mucking around with this 😀

From what I understand there are lots of options.

1. If you partition the drive on a modern PC (e.g. through a USB adapter) with a modern OS (7+ for example) it will be aligned correctly. Formatting you can do then on either machine, new or XP.

2. If you partition the drive on the XP machine, using the XP Installation process the drive will be mis-aligned. Use a tool from the manufacturer to align it. Or with a Seagate you don't need to do anything because it has SmartAlign technology. If you've got Seagate that uses advanced format but does not have SmartAlign > Contact Seagate through website for align tool. I will have a look if one of the drives I have qualifies.

Or use GParted on XP machine to partition the drive and select the alignment option (there are two: cylinders for old drives and the other one for newer drives using advanced formatting). Then install XP

3. Third party alignment software but really not needed. Also costs $$$s.

4. Don't worry about it. You will lose performance but that's it. I was not aware of this issue but been mostly using Seagate drives. But will align WD drives from now on.

EDIT: And cloning might mis-align it again I read. So double check.

EDIT EDIT:

Due to Microsoft no longer supporting Windows XP after April 8, 2014, the HGST Alignment Tool for use with 4K Advanced Format drives with Windows XP will no longer be provided or supported.

Tetrium wrote:

shamino wrote:

if this is a recent model hard disk then it will have 4KB physical sectors with 512 byte emulation. WinXP doesn't know anything about this, so it will think the sectors really are 512 bytes.
For the best performance, the partitions should be aligned with the physical sectors, but WinXP won't do this correctly on a modern drive. To accomplish this you can use a recent version of gParted, or some other modern partitioning utility. Just enable the option in gparted that offers to align the partitions on a 1MB boundary, and that will do it. You can have WinXP do the formatting, it's just the partition placement which is better handled by gparted.
If you create the partition(s) in WinXP, then typically it places the first partition at the 63rd 512-byte sector, which does not align with the real 4KB sectors on newer hard disks. It will still work, but it won't perform quite as well.

Is it possible to do this from Windows 7 (including partitioning the drive) and then installing XP onto the drive (in another rig).
Edit: "from Windows 7" I meant using the Windows 7 standard tools for aligning the drive (if these exist).

According to this:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windo … v=vs.85%29.aspx
You need Windows 7 to be at Service Pack 1. Assuming you have SP1, then it should know how to place a new partition in the correct alignment. I don't think it will realign a pre-existing partition though, unless you use some 3rd party utility for that.
Once you've placed the partition, then you can boot it up with a Windows XP disc and just tell it to format/install on the partition that you've already created. Don't let Windows XP create any new partitions itself.

I agree with philscomputerlab on all the possible options, except I don't trust Seagate's "SmartAlign" to work as well as advertised. I think it would be preferable to not rely on that.

shamino wrote:

I agree with philscomputerlab on all the possible options, except I don't trust Seagate's "SmartAlign" to work as well as advertised. I think it would be preferable to not rely on that.

🤣 yea I wonder if anyone has actually test this SmartAlign 😀

All this talk about alignment is for hard drives bigger then 2 tb?or goes for all hard drives no matter about size?

Any drive with 4k physical sectors but 512-byte logical sectors

alexanrs wrote:

Any drive with 4k physical sectors but 512-byte logical sectors

^^

Early drives have information on the label. They often refer to it as "Advanced Format" rather than 4k sectors.

Best is to check the model number online and the datasheet should tell you. I have 500 GB and 640 GB drives from ages ago and they are 4k.

The "drives larger than 2 TB is a different issue / barrier.

Gamecollector wrote:

P.S. It looks like you can get the block size and the partition offset with wmic command. "Wmic partition get blocksize, startingoffset, name", then divide the offset to the blocksize. If the result is integer - your partition is aligned...

I just tried this under XP on my modern PC, and it looks like the blocksize parameter doesn't really work with advanced format drives.

I have 3 hard drives on this machine. 2 of them are older drives with 512 byte sectors, but 1 of them (a WD10EZEX) is a newer "advanced format" drive which uses 4KB sectors and 512 byte emulation.
WMIC is reporting all 3 of the hard disks and all the partitions which I have installed in this machine, but it's reporting a blocksize of 512 for all of them. It looks like wmic can't see past the 512 byte emulation so it's getting fooled like the rest of XP.

I think if you do the division, and get an integer which is in turn divisible by 8, then that should mean you're aligned on a 4KB boundary which is sufficient to eliminate the performance issue.
Or to put it another way, just take the StartingOffset value and divide by 4096 - if you get an integer then it's 4KB aligned. Ignore the reported BlockSize value because it gets fooled by the 512 emulation.