Buying New Non-Advanced Format Disk

Discussion in 'Windows XP Hardware' started by Lex24, Mar 11, 2018.

  1. Lex24

    Lex24

    Joined:
    Dec 31, 2017
    Messages:
    51
    Likes Received:
    19
    Location:
    Canada
    I have decided to check Amazon if you can still buy a new disk which is NOT an Advanced Format Drive. It means it should have both logical and physical sector size of 512 bytes, like all the disks in the days of XP. This makes life easier, especially when dealing with disk image backups made with older software.

    Western Digital's WD5000AAKX seems to be such a disk, as confirmed on WD forums here:

    https://community.wd.com/t/is-the-wd5000aakx-advanced-format/14372

    Here is some background about restoring the disk image:

    https://knowledgebase.macrium.com/display/KNOW/Incompatible+Disk+Selected

    And here is the disk, on Amazon.com and Amazon.ca:

    https://www.amazon.com/WD5000AAKX-500GB-7200RPM-SATA-DRIVE/dp/B00X4F40HC

    https://www.amazon.ca/Western-Digital-3-5-Inch-Desktop-WD5000AAKX/dp/B00461G3MS

    The specs are as follows: 3.5 in, 500 GB, SATA 6 Gb/s, 7200 RPM

    I actually have XP installed on an Advanced Format disk (sector size: logical 512 bytes / physical 4096 bytes), but to be on the safe side I aligned the disk to CHS (Cylinder Head Sector) instead of MiB. There are no problems with this configuration and the image backups made with 2009 version of Acronis True Image work ok.
     
    Last edited: Mar 11, 2018
    Lex24, Mar 11, 2018
    #1
Ask a Question

Want to reply to this thread or ask your own question?

You'll need to choose a username for the site, which only take a couple of moments (here). After that, you can post your question and our members will help you out.