# Dual booting with WD 1TB "Advanced Format"



## KingPing (Apr 21, 2010)

Hi, i am planning to buy (or was planning) this 1TB HD from Western Digital: WD10EARS. This drive, use the new "Advanced Format", and to make 2 partitions i have to use the WD align  utility, at least in XP, so far, so good.

 I'm not going to install any OS in the drive, its only for storage. 

 What i dont know is if the drive will work both in XP 32bit and Win7 64bit?, (i  use both of them in my PC), do i have to run the utility in both OS?.

 I can live with the drive not being as fast in XP as it is in Win7, i dont care that, but will using the drive in XP, and then boot into Win7, cause some problem like the drive not being recognized, or data loss, etc.

I post here since WD support was not that supportive after all:

 "El WD Align System Utility debe utilizarse solo una vez para hacer la partición de su disco.
Lamentablemente no proveemos soporte para doble sistema operativo, de todos modos usted puede intentar instalar ambos sistemas operativos."

 In short they say: WD Align System Utility only has to be used once to create the partitions, and that unfortunately they dont support dual OS, but (funny part) they encourage me to try, and install both OS (yeah give me the money and then i will try). 

 I told them that i did not want to install any OS in that drive, i only want it for storage.

Thanks.


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## Solaris17 (Apr 21, 2010)

any partitioned disk will show up fine in any OS


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## KingPing (Apr 23, 2010)

Ok it works, what you said is by far more useful than the lame support from WD

Thanks!


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## Solaris17 (Apr 23, 2010)

KingPing said:


> Ok it works, what you said is by far more useful than the lame support from WD
> 
> Thanks!



NP man


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## DanishDevil (Apr 23, 2010)

TechPowerUp! Where our tech support is not only free of charge, but is better than Western Digital's!


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## szobanov (Sep 24, 2010)

Hi!

Sorry to hijack and revive this thread a bit, but I have a very similar problem and unfortunately WDC Support could not clarify my concerns.

The situation is this:

- I have a Windows 7/XP dual-boot system in which Windows 7 is the primary OS and I'm planning to buy a WD20EARS drive as a secondary non-boot drive, solely for storage purposes.

- I would format and partition the drive under Windows 7, but of course, I'd like to be able to use it under XP without any performance hit.

The question is:

As far as I know, I don't need the align utility, nor the jumpers to do the partitioning under Windows 7. In this scenario, would XP be OK with the way Win7 partitioned my drive without using the Align utility or the jumpers?

Or should I just format the drive under XP with the jumpers on and forget about this whole question?

Thank you.


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## AsRock (Sep 24, 2010)

If you are installing 2+ OS's to a HDD XP has to be the 1st one installed as if you installed XP after it will remove the option of being able to boot into Vista\Win7.

I tried using a align utility a month or so ago and all 4 systems did not need it which is a total of 11 HDD's. i do believe it's fairly rare you need to with HDDs.


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## freaksavior (Sep 24, 2010)

AsRock said:


> If you are installing 2+ OS's to a HDD XP has to be the 1st one installed as if you installed XP after it will remove the option of being able to boot into Vista\Win7.
> 
> I tried using a align utility a month or so ago and all 4 systems did not need it which is a total of 11 HDD's. i do believe it's fairly rare you need to with HDDs.



Not true. If you install xp second, you need to stick in the 7/vista dvd and repair the os, then both of the os's will show up. I've done it many times.


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## Magikherbs (Sep 24, 2010)

I would use the xp disc to partition you drive. If you start with Win7, it will create an added 100-300mb system partition automatically.  The only thing I would use the WD disc for is diagnostics and inital setup(if necc). 
Some mobo's wont enbable S.M.A.R.T. and/or 32bit data transfer, by default...


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## AsRock (Sep 24, 2010)

freaksavior said:


> Not true. If you install xp second, you need to stick in the 7/vista dvd and repair the os, then both of the os's will show up. I've done it many times.



Thought there might of been away but always thought it would be more trouble some. Would that not replace files you dont want to as well though ?.


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## Kenshai (Sep 24, 2010)

AsRock said:


> Thought there might of been away but always thought it would be more trouble some. Would that not replace files you dont want to as well though ?.



Nope that works just fine. That's how I have always done it as well.


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## AsRock (Sep 24, 2010)

Kenshai said:


> Nope that works just fine. That's how I have always done it as well.



Cool, i always did it XP 1st then vista was a none issue not knowing that as it was not XP X64 going wrong it was Vista if any of them lol.  Good to know all the same .


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## freaksavior (Sep 24, 2010)

AsRock said:


> Cool, i always did it XP 1st then vista was a none issue not knowing that as it was not XP X64 going wrong it was Vista if any of them lol.  Good to know all the same .



XP sucks with disk management. I hated doing it that way.


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