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Migrating Installation to Advanced Format Drive Methods?

Z

Zero1

Limp Gawd
Joined
Apr 26, 2003
Messages
324
Hi guys
I've decided to upgrade the HDD in my laptop for something a little faster and higher capacity, and I've run into this thing called Advanced Format. Before I get into my concerns, here's my current config:

Vaio VPCF12M0E
Win 7 Home Premium SP1
Intel 5 series chipset with RST driver 9.5.4.1001
WD Scorpio Blue 500GB WD5000BEVT (reported as 512 byte sectors)

I intend to replace the HDD with a WD Scorpio Black 750GB WD7500BPKT, and my concerns are data migration. I do not have a Windows disk (just a recovery partition and some recovery disks I was prompted to burn), and I want to avoid reinstallation at all costs (would take forever to reinstall and reconfigure everything).

My intention is to use the integrated Windows backup to create a drive image, and restore it to the new drive, but having read about Advanced Format, I have some questions.

WD-Align_chart_r3.jpg

According to this chart, you only need to run the WD Align tool if you are using cloning software. Am I right to think that the Windows 7 image restore does not count as cloning software, and that if I use Windows 7 backup to restore my old drive image to the new one, that I won't need to use WD Align after?

I also notice that WD suggest you need the RST driver 9.6 or higher. I presume I should install this prior to making the drive image so that the restored image already has the required version for 4k sectors?

Also during the restore operation, you are given the option to load drivers (eg if you have a RAID card). Should I do this anyway? I think it might be a good idea if I'm restoring a partition that already has the driver installed.
http://www.intel.com/support/chipsets/imsm/sb/CS-031502.htm

I presume the AHCI controller will work this chipset/laptop?


Any advice or info would be greatly appreciated. I'm waiting for my drive to be delivered, but all this stuff is going round in my head and making me worried that I might run into complications.

Thanks.
 
Nobody has any idea? Would this be more suited in the OS section of the forum?
 
Just clone the drive. If it was formatted with windows 7 then it is already aligned fine for
advanced format drives.

Edit: I never used windows 7 image restore so I do not know what that does. I was thinking more of clonezilla, dd or acronis true image cloning.. With my favorite being dd since its fast and creates an exact bit for bit copy.
 
Thanks, in that case then if Windows 7 formatted drives are AF compatible then the Windows 7 restore utility should work, since it formats the drive prior to restoring the data.

Also the backups created by Windows 7 don't appear to be 100% copies, for instance I had all my Windows updates install, but the list of updates did not list them all.

I'll give Win 7 backup a try. I think I'll upgrade the RST driver on the installation and load it with F6 just to make sure and report back.
 
I can report back with success.

Downloaded and installed latest RST driver in safe mode (not on my laptop right now but it was at least v10).

Also downloaded RST F6 AHCI drivers and placed them on a USB stick

Made a new drive image and recovery disk (in case there were any changes or updates to the contents of the disk with me updating the RST driver, plus installing SP1 a few weeks back).

Powered down, removed battery and swapped the drives out.

Powered back on with the Windows 7 backup/recovery disk in and started recovery procedure. I plugged in my USB stick and clicked load driver (just to make sure). Removed stick once they were loaded and proceeded with the restore operation.

Drive was formatted and everything was copied back over no problem. Booted without issue, but the first boot prompted me to restart as it detected that a new HDD had been installed.

Windows had only formatted the same amount of space that the previous HDD had, so I went into control panel and expanded the partition.

Everything is running fine and RST reports 4096 byte physical sectors with 512 byte logical sectors.

Also here is a boot video comparing the two drives.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IjMQsMI2Lf0


So just to confirm, you can migrate data to an advanced format harddrive using Windows 7 internal backup/restore and you don't need to run WD align
 
You have not proven you're aligned.

Personally I use AS SSD, I don't launch the bench, just look at the offset.
 
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