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M15x and "Advance Format" HDD

Discussion in 'Alienware M15x' started by LinkRS, Apr 23, 2012.

LinkRS Notebook Consultant

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Hello Everyone,

I have run out of disk space on my M15x and have just purchased a Seagate Momentus XT 750 GB to replace my stock 500GB. I am in the process of doing my due diligence before installing, I came across an issue between pre SP-1 Windows 7 and 4K sector sizes. I am pretty sure that my recovery partition has pre SP-1 installed, and based on what I was reading, there is a good chance of ending up with misaligned partitions. Has anyone here experienced this issue, and either know how to fix or prevent it? I would hate to purchase this new faster drive to only handicap it out the gate. Thanks!

Rich S.

LinkRS, Apr 23, 2012

#1
otosan Notebook Consultant

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Why don't use install the SP then?

otosan, Apr 24, 2012

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LinkRS Notebook Consultant

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Hi Otosan,

Thanks for the help . Unfortunately installing SP1 after the fact doesn't fix the issue. The miss-aligning occurs at the time of partition creation, and from what I read, you need the SP-1installer to do it. I was hoping to just use Dell DataSafe to rebuild the OS, as it would save time. However, it probably isn't large cluster aware, and will allign along 512 bytes, throwing the partition (and performance) off. Thanks again!

Rich S.

LinkRS, Apr 24, 2012

#3