Designed to work with most modern operating systems, such as , + , MacOS. These include support at the software level.

For those who use :

- if the hard drive contains one partition ( single partition), you need to install a jumper on pins 7 and 8 ( jumper pins 7 – 8):

- if the hard drive contains several partitions ( multiple partitions), you need to download from the site western digital special and use it to “align” the disk.

***

How to use W.D. Align?

- transfer data from the "aligned" disk to another medium;

- go to the page Advanced Format Hard Drive Download Utility;

- select the required one from the drop-down lists ( On which OS will you be running the Advanced Format hard drive?; Are you using a cloning utility?; Will this be the primary drive or a secondary drive in your system?; How many partitions do you intend to create on the drive?), press Submit;

- register (a rather tedious procedure: first you need to register yourself, and then register your hard drive by specifying serial number, Place of Purchase, Date of purchase, - only after that you will receive the desired download link ...);

– download and install the program following the instructions of the installer;

- start ;

- in the window W.D. Align click Next;

- in the window Protect your data before aligning the partitions click OK;

- in the window Select partitions you want to align check the box next to the disk to be aligned (pay attention to the icons that mark the disks: if the disk does not support Western Digital Advanced Format, you won't be able to "align" it) –> Next;

- in the window Summary click Proceed;

– wait for the operation to complete (depending on the size of the disk and the presence of files on it, it can take up to 20 minutes);

- in the window Fix partition alignment operation succeeded click Back to wizard if you want to return to the window (otherwise press Quit to exit);

– note that after the operation is completed, the disk icon in the window has changed from Non-optimally aligned partition on Optimally aligned partition:

Notes

1. If If you installed a jumper on pins 7 and 8 of the hard drive, then the jumper must be removed before starting. It is IMPOSSIBLE to start with the jumper installed!

2. If you want to use an "aligned" hard drive in an external USB box, first connect the hard drive to SATA- the motherboard connector (with the , the jumper on pins 7-8 must be REMOVED!). Run , "align" the hard drive, after that you can use it externally USB- boxing.

In this not entirely scientific, but we hope that the popular article will focus on how to make friends hard drives from the company western digital brands: WD20EARS, WD15EARS, WD10EARS, WD8000AARS, WD6400AARS, WD25EZRSDTL, WD30EZRSDTL with operating system Windows XP. Their specifications will be given at the end of the article. We will consider the procedure on the example of a disk WD15EARS, but all other models are installed in the same way. Definitely happy buyers/owners this device seen the sticker on the package white color(as in the picture) and on the disc itself, which reads:

Below is the translation with a few comments:

An extended-format hard drive (nonsense, of course, but that's what they called it). For full performance:

• Windows® XP, if you need to partition a disk into several partitions, or to use backup software - use the WD Align program available at www.wdc.com/advformat (below you will be offered links to the necessary software)
• Windows® XP, if you intend to use just one partition that occupies the entire disk space - set jumper 7-8 before installing the disk (it's a mystery what this jumper does, but it's better not to use it) or use WD Align (and also better way, which will be described below as "optimal")
• For all other operating systems - the disk is ready for use "as is" (and now the attention is the question - how has it never occurred to anyone after reading this phrase to install this disk on a computer running under Windows control 95, and then sue the developers for moral damages).

Here is such a piece of equipment. Well, now let's get down to business.

What is Advanced Format Drive and why is it needed?

Without going into details, we can say that this is a special organization of data arrangement on high-capacity disks, which allows you to implement sectors that fit 4096 bytes, against the standard 512 bytes. It is quite possible that this is achieved by optimizing the so-called perpendicular organization of writing to disk. Plus, the following technology is used: each sector consists of two parts Sync / DAM (introductory record), and ECC (recovery information), between two sectors there is one gap (not 8). And it also allows you to read a lot and quickly at the minimum spindle speed (5400 - in accordance with current industry standards), and hence the energy savings, silence and temperature are several degrees lower than other models. In a nutshell, what can be said about the advantages of this technology.

Why is it necessary to adapt to Windows XP?

The fact is that the specifications of this technology are known to such operating systems as Windows Vista/Seven. In Windows XP, it is not incorporated and, apparently, it may never appear there. In principle, everything will work without any dancing with a tambourine, however, if you carry out a series of manipulations, the read / write speed will increase, and, as a result, the performance of the system as a whole. Therefore, do not neglect the manufacturer's recommendations and do everything you need. Here the fastest, optimal and effective method how to fully prepare within 10 minutes HDD to work without burdening your Windows XP with the installation of WD Align software.

All the ways to tame the hard drive WD15EARS and similar to Windows XP?

Let's start in order:

The first way we have already seen is installing WD Align, which can be downloaded at http://www.wdc.com/en/products/advancedformat/ , having previously answered the questions on the right side of the page or from our website, because on the manufacturer's website now some technical problems;
- The second way is to put jumper 7-8- cheap and cheerful, but better not, - after all, it is not clear how this disk can then behave in Windows environment 7, and sometime a mass transition to him or his follower will surely begin;
- the third way is to simply properly prepare it for work.

Getting the WD15EARS Hard Drive Ready to Work the Right Way

First of all, we download the program Acronis True Image WD Edition of the Russian version, although if it is subjectively more convenient for you to work in a version in another language, then you can make your choice at the link Acronis True Image WD Edition in 11 languages ​​of the world. Perhaps this program is "hardwired" to work only with devices from WD, although this is just an assumption. But in this case, this is exactly what we need. We also need an image file for work. boot disk WD Align CD, which should be downloaded and burned by any accessible way to disk. Moreover, the recommendation here is this - it is better to write to a rewritable CD-blank, because if you do not plan to format it regularly, this program will be needed very, very rarely.

Installing Acronis True Image WD Edition

In principle, there is nothing complicated in installing this program, however, taking into account that some may experience sacred awe before the ritual of installing hardware and programs on a computer, we give all the steps in pictures and descriptions.

Select "Install Acronis...".

Reading these laudatory epithets, we are imbued with love and respect for the developer. However, today we need only one function from this program - the creation of a partition. It is better to do it using the tools of this program, and not the built-in ones. Windows tools xp. Click "Next".

We read the End User License Agreement most carefully ( license agreement, for those who do not understand English), it is necessary to agree with him no less carefully, otherwise everything is lost! Check the box next to "I agree to the terms of the agreement" and click "Next"

Here we select "Custom" - after all, we are experienced users today, aren't we? And click "Next"

In principle, there will be no crime if we select both components for installation, so we leave everything as it is and click "Next"

If you are the only user of this computer, then you can leave everything as it is. If not, then look at the situation. In fact, in order not to confuse you, we clarify that the number of computer users in this case means the number of accounts used on your computer. If for you the phrase " Account"Akin to an ancient Indian spell, then we do not change anything and click "Next"

Now, to the sounds of fanfare and drum roll, we press with all our might ... No, not "Next", but "START"!

If you see such a window, then everything worked out and the installation went!

We say "Yes" and wait for the reboot, simultaneously marveling at the high speed of loading the Windows XP operating system in comparison with Windows 2000 and Windows Vista.

After restarting the computer, press the button Start>All programs>Acronis> and run, respectively, Acronis True Image WD Edition. And immediately a message pops up:

Here you need to click "YES"

Here we choose our new disk and press the "Next" button

Do not forget to check the "Create a new partition in the unallocated area" checkbox and click "Next"

Choice file system. In fact, it makes sense to choose only NTFS. Although the program writes a warning (it is standard, no matter what size disk we are going to partition), regarding the inability to understand it previous versions Windows - still choose NTFS, because. using the disk in the above operating systems is not technically possible. Yes, and Fat16 has limitations - maximum size a 2GB partition, Fat32 has 32 GB and not a byte more, while NTFS has no such restrictions, and the file system itself is much more reliable and safer. Click "Next".

If you are not going to create more than 4 partitions on this disk, or even limit yourself to one (as we, for example), then the first option (Primary Partition) will do. If the disk is constantly inside the system unit and is never removed from it, then you will not feel any difference - Windows will work approximately the same with such a partition and with this one, but if you want to check your disk for viruses on another computer by connecting it to this computer via a USB mobile rack, then in the case of a "Logical" partition (in a Windows environment, it is still " dynamic disk" is called) most likely there will be problems and your plans will fail. Click "Next"

The disk label can be regarded only as a kind of decorative element, it does not carry any information function for the system. Therefore, you can safely leave this field blank and click "Next"

We press the "Proceed" button and wait ... Although, despite the large volume of the disk, the procedure takes a few seconds

Here is the reward for our military labors ... But that's not all. Remember the disk image that you had to download and burn to disk?

Adapting the disk for use with Windows XP - the last step

For those who do not know how to burn discs at all, we have posted an article (opens in a new window or tab) that can help you with this, and we will move on, according to the main topic of our article.

We insert a freshly burned disc and restart our computer. Do not forget to set the BIOS to boot from CDROM (if you don’t know how, then refer to the instructions for your motherboard) and booting from disk starts.

This window warns us to save all your data before starting. But, since our disk is pristine, we click "OK"

Check the box "I accept this agreement" and click "Next"

The program itself determined our new disk, so we boldly click "Next"

This window contains a list of actions that the program will perform. Click "Proceed".

The process has begun, and we can only wait. It is short, and also takes only a few seconds.

Well, that's all, if you please, rejoice! We press "Quit", we restart the computer and we begin to exploit the new device in the tail and in the mane, because. according to manufacturers (and this is true), these drives have low heat dissipation, so they feel quite good even in not very well ventilated cases. However, this is by no means a guide to action, because. well-designed cooling is the key to stable and long-term operation of your computer and should not be skimped on. The vacuum cleaner is also a friend of the computer, but you just can’t scratch the vacuum cleaner tube on the radio components. Although they are securely soldered, they also tend to fly away from such familiarities.

Promised drive specs

Physical Specifications, Drive Performance
Declared formatted disk capacity 1	2,000,398 MB	1,500,301MB	1,000,204MB	800.204MB	640.135 MB
capacity	2TB	1.5TB	1TB	800GB	640GB
Bus type, baud rate	SATA 3Gb/s	SATA 3Gb/s	SATA 3Gb/s	SATA 3Gb/s	SATA 3Gb/s
Number of sectors	3,907,029,168	2,930,277,168	1,953,525,169	1,562,824,368	1,250,263,728
Cache size 3	64MB	64MB	64MB	64MB	64MB

Environmental specifications
Volume	2TB	1.5TB	1TB	800GB	640GB
Maximum performance
Operational (reading)	65G, 2ms	65G, 2ms	30G, 2ms	30G, 2ms	30G, 2ms
non-operational	250G, 2ms	250G, 2ms	300G, 2ms	300G, 2ms	300G, 2ms
Acoustic performance
idle mode	24 dBA (avg)	24 dBA (avg)	24 dBA (avg)	23 dBA (avg)	23 dBA (avg)
Search mode 0	29 dBA (avg)	29 dBA (avg)	33 dBA (avg)	27 dBA (avg)	27 dBA (avg)
Search Mode 3	25 dBA (avg)	25 dBA (avg)	29 dBA (avg)
Temperature characteristics
working	32° F to 140° F (-0° C to 60° C)	32° F to 140° F (-0° C to 60° C)	32° F to 140° F (-0° C to 60° C)	32° F to 140° F (-0° C to 60° C)	32° F to 140° F (-0° C to 60° C)
storage	-40°F to 158°F (-40°C to 70°C)	-40°F to 158°F (-40°C to 70°C)	-40°F to 158°F (-40°C to 70°C)	-40°F to 158°F (-40°C to 70°C)	-40°F to 158°F (-40°C to 70°C)

Electrical specifications
Volume	2TB	1.5TB	1TB	800GB	640GB
At rated voltage (12 VDC)
Read/Write	296 mA	296 mA
Simple	243 mA	243 mA
Standby mode	3mA	3mA
Dream	3mA
At rated voltage (5 VDC)
Read/Write	503 mA	503 mA
Simple	172 mA	172 mA
Standby mode	160mA	160mA
Dream	160mA	160mA
Rated input power
Read/Write	6.00 Watts	6.00 Watts	5.40 Watts	4.86 Watts	4.86 Watts
Simple	3.70 Watts	3.70 Watts	5.40 Watts	4.85 Watts	4.85 Watts
Standby mode	0.80 Watts	0.80 Watts	0.40 Watts	0.38 Watts	0.38 Watts
Dream	0.80 Watts	0.80 Watts	0.40 Watts	0.38 Watts	0.38 Watts

1 Assuming units of measurement that one megabyte (MB) = one million bytes, one gigabyte (GB) = one billion bytes, and one terabyte (TB) = one trillion bytes. The total available capacity is determined by the type of operating environment.
2 Assuming as units of measurement that 1 megabyte per second (MB/s) = one million bytes per second, one megabit per second (Mb/s) = one million bits per second and one gigabit per second (Gb/s) = equals one billion per second.
3 Assuming that one megabyte (MB) = 1,048,576 bytes as the units for the cache.

Publication date: 01/12/2011

It so happened that I urgently needed a terabyte HDD with a spindle speed of 5400 (for which - this is a separate sad song ..). And in the store there was only one suitable - WesternDigital series Greenpower WD10EARS with technology Advancedformat.
Aside from the slightly intimidating Advanced format, a normal drive: SATA-300, 64 MB cache, quiet.. Like this:

Marginal notes: The head parking technology ensures that the recording head will never come into contact with the surface of the disc under any circumstances.

Since the owners of green "westerns" have already encountered the problem of the extreme slowness of Greens, I did not rush to put the disk into the system, but climbed into the network ... read ...

Everything that is written below was not invented by me. But I can't name the author.
First, they are not alone.
Secondly: approximately the same thing is copied from site to site, from article to article, and I don’t know who stole the quote from whom.
And thirdly, I also had a little hand in it.
In any case: thanks to the authors.

Theoretically and briefly Advanced format is:
Plates on the owners of this technology are divided into sectors not by 512 bytes, but by 4 KB, i.e., if before a four-kilobyte file was stored in eight sectors, now only one is needed for this. Accordingly, there are eight times fewer different service blocks (Sync / DAM, ECC), inter-sector gaps and sectors that are only partially filled with information.

What does it give?
Less downtime, less chance of errors, more chance of recovering erroneously read data, increased recording density, blah blah blah..

What's bad about it?
Windows 2000/XP can not work with these discs. at all.
Windows Vista and Windows 7 - can. But not really:

But software, starting with the BIOS, was created and is being created in the vast majority based on the fact that the sector has a size 512 bytes.
And Western Digital made such a feint: physically, on the surface of the plates, 4-kB sectors are created, but logically, the disk reports that it works with sectors of 512 bytes. That is, each physical sector contains eight logical ones. This is the emulation..

And here I will give in full QUOTE:

"... The fact is that the still more than popular Windows XP (as well as all of its predecessors) uses a very interesting formatting scheme hard drive.

When creating a partition on a disk, the first 63 sectors (from zero to 62) are reserved, and the partition itself starts from the 63rd sector. This very 63rd sector in the case of using physical 4-KB sectors falls exactly on the eighth logical sector in the eighth physical sector. And then the file comes into play. NTFS system, working with a hard disk in clusters of 4 kB.

And we get an extremely unsightly picture: due to a shift of 512 bytes (the same 63rd sector), each cluster of the file system is located on two physical 4k sectors at once, despite the fact that they are equal in size. When reading, this only leads to the fact that we lose efficiency due to the need to read a little more information than necessary, and extract the necessary pieces of data from it. But on a cluster write, the hard disk each time has to read two blocks, change only those eight logical sectors in them that correspond to the addresses of the file system cluster, and only after that write them back to the disk. Writing a 512-byte sector, namely, such requests change information in the system data, respectively, generates a reading of the physical 4K sector, replacing the data in it with the corresponding logical 512-byte sector and writing a physical 4K sector to disk...

.. It is clear that this hits very hard in terms of performance. What prompted Microsoft to choose the size of the starting indent exactly 63 sectors -no one knows now, but if earlier this only manifested itself when working with RAID arrays (there the stripes also turned out to be shifted relative to the operating system clusters) and SSD disks (due to block access), now it has become a rather big problem... One thing is good: Windows Vista and Windows 7 do not have such a problem, since these systems approach disk partitioning in a completely different way ... "

Who is to blame is more or less clear. Now about what to do.

On the disk itself, there is this picture:

This is it, bigger:

Which means something like this:

* in Windows XP: if you want to split the disk into several partitions, or to use cloning programs, use the WD Align program.
* in Windows XP: if you plan to use only one partition that occupies all-disk space - set jumper 7-8 before installing the disk or use WD Align * For all other operating systems - the disk is ready for use "as is", i.e. nothing needs to be done.

About jumper: if it is set, then the disk will shift its entire logical structure by one logical sector so that the 63rd sector, from the point of view of the operating system, will actually be the 64th sector, that is, it will fall neatly at the beginning of the physical sector. What solves the problem. While the jumper is standing ..
But.
I don't know how a jumper drive will behave if you have 2 operating systems, for example Windows XP and Win7.

And if you remove the jumper for some reason (well, suddenly?)? .. I won’t lie - I don’t know either. And you? Some people think that in this case the information can be lost. You can check by the way :)

What I will now advise, and what I have done with my disk, can be found on the Internet, rummaging through its deposits. Well .. I collected everything for you and for you, analyzed it, chose the best, tried it and I will tell and show it.

If you want to install an operating system on Green Power (and they already exist at a speed of 7200), I strongly recommend doing the following procedure on a computer with operating system already installed. Otherwise, it may turn out that when loading your disk, it will not be defined as a terabyte disk, and the system will consider the cache volume as the volume of the disk.

Go:
For users of Western Green drives, Acronis True Image WD Edition is available in Russian free of charge. The Russian Acronis AlignTool is also free in the same way.

Both programs in the archive can be downloaded here: http://narod.ru/disk/23115273000/WD.rar.html
Size: 163.81 MB
md5:
password -drbobah.com

In both programs, the step-by-step wizard will not give you the right to make a mistake, just read carefully.

Install Acronis AlignTool.

Install Acronis True Image WD Edition.

A reboot is required after installing Acronis True Image WD Edition. Turn off the computer, connect the Western Green Power hard drive, after logging in, launch Acronis True Image WD Edition.

Why did I highlight in red primary , but not logical?

If you are not going to install a system on a disk and it will remain in your system unit- then you can create a logical one (this will automatically create another tiny section for service files).

But if you decide to attribute the logical disk to a friend - when connected to someone else's computer (especially via USB), problems are very likely in case logical disk.
So what do I choose primary .

The disk is now in the system. But that is not all!

Launch Acronis AlignTool.

The program will find desired disk and determines that it is not an optimally aligned partition.

You see, - found and determined: "Not optimally aligned section."

By the way, I just didn’t have time to make one screen - everything happens very quickly. Because the disc is pristine. But if there is already data on it, everything will be much longer.

Click " Return to master" to make sure everything is ok:

Actually - that's all.

By the way, once: after this procedure, copying more than 600 gigabytes to a western (and do not forget - it has a rotation speed of 5400) took 15 minutes less than copying the same files to Hitachi with a rotation speed of 7200. I don’t know why.

By the way, two things: the fact that the Caviar Green family of hard drives has a spindle speed that varies from 5400 to 7200 rpm depending on the load is a myth. Speed constant. May be slightly different, depending on the model, but constant. 5000 or 5400.

By the way, three:
P.S. If I'm wrong somewhere, please correct me.
Or add.
Fact to correct the situation when the volume of the disk is determined by the volume of its cache, I'm too lazy to write yet.
Yes, and there is no time .. And in general - God forbid ...

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WD Align - Software for Advanced Format Drives

About Advanced Format Drives

WD drives with Advanced Format technology are optimized for operating Mac systems OS and new Windows versions(Windows Vista and Windows 7) installed from scratch. Advanced Format technology used by WD and other manufacturers hard drives in order to improve the efficiency of the use magnetic media and thanks to this, produce more capacious drives.

For the Advanced Format hard drive to function properly, you may need to run the WD Align software after you install an operating system on it or use it as an additional drive. WD Align sets the optimal partition boundaries on Advanced Format drives for optimal performance in certain configurations. (More details about configurations - in the table)

When installing Windows XP from scratch on one partition, short the jumper pins 7-8. If you choose this option, DO NOT run the WD Align software. To ensure full performance, it is enough to install this jumper, but this must be done before installing and marking the drive. If you are partitioning your drive when installing Windows XP from scratch, DO NOT set the jumper, but run the WD Align program.

If you intend to copy any operating system (Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7) to a WD Advanced Format drive, you will need the WD Align software. Many cloning programs have not yet been updated to support Advanced Format drives. Therefore, in order to ensure the full performance of these drives, you must use the WD Align program.

What does Advanced Format technology do for me?
Advanced Format technology allows hard drives use the features implemented in new operating systems. Thanks to it, manufacturers of hard drives can create larger drives: both today and in the future.

What are the benefits of Advanced Format technology?
Advanced Format technology allows you to store more data on the same hard disk surface area.

Can I install an Advanced Format technology drive in my computer?
New WD drives are optimized for Windows 7, Windows Vista and Mac OS X Tiger, Leopard, Snow Leopard. If you intend to install an Advanced Format drive in a computer running one of these operating systems, install it as usual. those who use the old operating systems drives such as Windows XP and cloning programs must run the WD Align program to ensure full performance of these drives. (see table for configuration options)

What is the WD Align program for?
The WD Align program allows Advanced Format technology drives to run at full speed on older operating systems.

Will I need to run WD Align the next time I reformat the drive?
No, you only need to run the WD Align software once, after initial installation Windows XP. After the partition boundaries with Windows XP are optimized, they will remain in the same place even if the disk is reformatted or the composition of the files on it changes significantly.

Which drive models use Advanced Format?
Advanced Format technology is available on select models in the WD Caviar Green family. Over time, it will be implemented in models of other families and other capacities. WD Advanced Format drives have specific installation instructions printed on the labels. Please read them before installing the drive.

Where can I get the WD Align software?
You can download the WD Align software from the website download page western digital .