Windows 8.1 - Advanced Format Support

[peterpepo]

Hello,
I've bought Western Digital 2TB Caviar Black hard drive for my upcoming pc build.

As the name states, the drive does support / has Advanced formatting.

 

On the hard drive package, there is note recommending to visit western digital website to check infomation about advanced format

http://wdc.com/global/products/features/?id=7&language=1

The website states / tells to use WD align utility after installing Windows XP, Vista or 7.

 

Now, I will be using windows 8.1.

I will put my OS on SSD, and the data will be on WD Black mentioned above.

 

How do I do this ?
1, I install my operating system normally on my SSD drive.

2, I boot operating system.

3, I quick format my WD Black HDD using windows built-in format tool ? And set sector size to 4096 bytes / 4K ?

 

Is this correct, or do I need to use the utility also on windows 8 ?

According to this http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/hh848035(v=vs.85).aspx

Windows 8 should support 4K sector size out of the box.

 

Thanks for answers and srry for such noob question.

[Shd0w2]

Pretty much right for windows 7, I just right click on control panel and I think go to some info stuff, and it allows me to just partition my normal HDD easily.

 

 

I would assume it would be the same or similar on win8.

[peterpepo]

Yes, that's right, but I have came through tons of stuff regarding importance of proper alignment of sectors to physical sector on hard drive.

The problem would be if 4K OS sector spreads across 2 of HDDs physical sectors, which would decraese performance dramatically - HDD has to read 2 sectors instead of 1 etc...

I want to avoid this and use things properly.

[Unknown_Guy]

The native 4K is only supported by Win8, http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2510009 and only  512E is Win7, but that's just quick googling.

[peterpepo]

The native 4K is only supported by Win8, http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2510009 and only  512E is Win7, but that's just quick googling.

Ok, so I should be perfectly fine then, right ?

[Unknown_Guy]

It looks like that. NTFS default cluster size is 4KB so file system will send it in chunk of this size so everything should work without performance hits. Toms Hardware have thread on this here http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/262415-32-sectors-win7.

 

I wonder what would happen when cluster size is set to 512 bytes. It seems in that case you would loos half the disk space.