WD10EARS advanced format question...

Nanobot · 1 May 2010 at 14:30

Have just been reading up on the WD10EARS advanced format and also how you need to use the WD align partition utility and / or jumper 7-8 when using XP.
Does anyone know if you have to do this if just using the drive in an external caddy enclosure? Does the above apply only if you plan to install / boot Windows XP?
Cheers.

Philtor · 2 May 2010 at 02:23

Only applies to a primary HDD used with an o/s. Not an external HDD.

wonko · 2 May 2010 at 07:28

You sure phil? Not what I understood...
The easiest way will be to attach the new external drive to a 4K sector aware OS like Win 7 system to do the partitioning/formatting.
If using xp for partitioning, if you are only ever going to have one partition on the disk then you can use the jumper, otherwise use wdalign instead.

Nanobot · 3 May 2010 at 11:00

That's my quandary. If I formatted it with 4k aware OS for partitioning and then use the external drive on an XP machine, will it detect? There seems to be a lot of info about alignment but not quite a lot on usage.
I did try and send WD an email but seems you need an account in order to ask a question. Will try and give them a call after the bank hols if still none the wiser.
Found a few places that still sell the EADS although with half the cache as the EARS. Decisions...

wonko · 3 May 2010 at 11:23

I can't see any reason it wouldn't detect OK. I've got NTFS formatted disks here that I move between 7 and xp without any difficulty. The only minor drawback I can think of with formatting on a win7 system is the recycler folder and system restore stuff it may put on the disk.

Nanobot · 3 May 2010 at 15:14

Thanks Wonko. Had a little look through the WD community forums and there seems to be issues there with EARS so just opted for the EADS instead...