#335169 - 20/07/2010 02:11
Re: 2 TB hard drive advice wanted
[Re: hybrid8]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 24/12/2001
Posts: 5528
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Depending on your setup, using NIC teaming aka 802.3ad may not provide any benefits to you.
The maximum that a single network connection can transfer is whatever a single link can do. You won't be able to do a Samba transfer of a file that goes at greater than 1 Gigabit for example.
This limitation is due to how 802.3ad was designed and the load balancing algorithm that is used. It will force all packets from a single connection down 1 link to prevent issues with out of order packets. It won't spread them out between all the links you've got.
The algorithm uses the MAC address and source + destination IP addresses to calculate a hash value which determines which link to use. There are nonstandard implementations which also include the port numbers in the hash calculation.
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#335174 - 20/07/2010 12:04
Re: 2 TB hard drive advice wanted
[Re: tman]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 12/11/2001
Posts: 7738
Loc: Toronto, CANADA
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I did some internal benchmarking (using Bonnie++) on the drives in the NAS and have posted it to the ReadyNAS forums. I'm also about to update a previous support ticket. Here's the most glaring part of the benchmark output: -----------------------DD Results-----------------------------------------------
4090848+0 records in
4090848+0 records out
2094514176 bytes (2.1 GB) copied, 151.814 seconds, 13.8 MB/s
That rate is well over 100MB/s on boxes that are working properly.
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#335219 - 20/07/2010 21:23
Re: 2 TB hard drive advice wanted
[Re: hybrid8]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 12/11/2001
Posts: 7738
Loc: Toronto, CANADA
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I've removed the WD drive from the NAS, set its jumpers to operate with 512byte sectors and installed it in my XP system. I'm backing up the NAS onto the WD and two additional 1.5TB USB drives.
Then I'm going to start with the NAS from scratch. I'll feel much better about figure out performance issues once I have everything backed up. Once that's all settled (fingers crossed) I'll put everything back onto the NAS.
The only thing making the copying anything close to sane, is Teracopy, which Matt had recommended and mentioned a number of times last year.
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#336017 - 11/08/2010 19:22
Re: 2 TB hard drive advice wanted
[Re: mlord]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 20/05/2001
Posts: 2616
Loc: Bruges, Belgium
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All I can say on this, is that WD likes to "unload the heads" after 8-seconds of inactivity, and then place the drives into a lower power state. They call this the "Idle 3" state.
(...)
I googled for it here, and found wdidle3-1.03.zip for my 1.5TB drive. I used this to reset the "idle 3" timeout from 8-seconds to 30-seconds on my own drive, at my own risk.
WDIDLE3 /S30
There's a help file in the .zip archive explaining the various command options.
Cheers
Mark, I've now also bought one of those WD20EARS drives, as per you recommendation. I now need to change this idle head park default. I've found the wdidle3 program (a newer version than the one you're mentioning even, the wdidle3-1_05.zip, new since last month). Now, I've noticed this utility also give you the option to disable the timer completely. Would you recommend this? Or would you still prefer having it changed to 30 seconds instead? What are the benefits of using this timer? Less risk of disk damage when an idle pc is bumped into? Less power consumption? Or something else?
_________________________
Riocar 80gig S/N : 010101580 red
Riocar 80gig (010102106) - backup
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#336038 - 12/08/2010 03:27
Re: 2 TB hard drive advice wanted
[Re: BartDG]
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enthusiast
Registered: 21/02/2006
Posts: 325
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Hi,
I bought a WD 2TB drive last weekend too. It is the Green version (we'll see how that works out), and I bought it locally from Best Buy. It had a marked price of $164.95 but they agreed to sell it to me for the on-line price of $139.95, I called about the previous day. I didn't want to fight shipping damage, I thought it was a reasonable price.
I loaded 1.4TB of music database (majority of my CD collection I ripped with EAC that was on 2 each 1TB drives) on it that night and it seems to work fine. I have used it to play .wav music selections and it doesn't seem to unload the heads or spin down during activity. I guess with .MP3's it may do that. If I get annoyed, I might use the wdidle3 software.
So far, so good.
Ross
_________________________
In SI, a little termination and attention to layout goes a long way. In EMC, without SI, you'll spend 80% of the effort on the last 3dB.
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#336044 - 12/08/2010 11:27
Re: 2 TB hard drive advice wanted
[Re: Ross Wellington]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 12/11/2001
Posts: 7738
Loc: Toronto, CANADA
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You should use the WDidle3 program anyway as your load count is going to rise much more quickly than it would otherwise and WD only warranty the drive up to a certain count (300k?)
I permanently retired the WD from my NAS. Just not worth the headaches - it made my NAS performance go to crap when mixed with the other drives I had in there. I bought a Seagate 2TB for the NAS and it has been performing flawlessly. The WD is permanently installed in my Windows PVR which I've also just migrated to WIndows 7 x64 from Windows XP.
I'm still running the WD with the compatibility jumper set, which I know I don't have to do for Windows 7. Mark, do you expect there to be a performance benefit if I were to run with the drive in its factory un-jumpered (4k) mode? I'd probably have to back everything up and first reformat the drive, right?
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#336045 - 12/08/2010 11:36
Re: 2 TB hard drive advice wanted
[Re: hybrid8]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 20/05/2001
Posts: 2616
Loc: Bruges, Belgium
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I also like to ask: is there an easy way to see if the partitions of the drive are aligned or not? Maybe a small utility which can show the start sector or something?
_________________________
Riocar 80gig S/N : 010101580 red
Riocar 80gig (010102106) - backup
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#336047 - 12/08/2010 11:56
Re: 2 TB hard drive advice wanted
[Re: BartDG]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 08/03/2000
Posts: 12338
Loc: Sterling, VA
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Sorry to go off topic (slightly), but is there a way to adjust spin-down time for an external drive? I have an external USB drive that seems to spin down after around two minutes of non-activity, which seems like way too little to me.
_________________________
Matt
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#336048 - 12/08/2010 12:52
Re: 2 TB hard drive advice wanted
[Re: Ross Wellington]
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pooh-bah
Registered: 13/01/2002
Posts: 1649
Loc: Louisiana, USA
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Good luck with your WD Green drive. I've had a couple of their 1.5 TB models. The reliability of them sucked. One had a SMART error come up after a month of use and it's replacement had piss poor performance. I never bothered to do a proper throughput test, but it got a 2.1 Windows 7 Experience score and froze up the PC for minutes at a time along with contributing to 30 minute boot times. I've since replaced it with a 2 TB Seagate Barracuda and so far things are working well again in my HTPC.
Stu
_________________________
If you want it to break, buy Sony!
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#336051 - 12/08/2010 13:32
Re: 2 TB hard drive advice wanted
[Re: BartDG]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 25/12/2000
Posts: 16706
Loc: Raleigh, NC US
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Any decent partitioning utility should show you that. Notably, that excludes Windows' builtin "Disk Management".
_________________________
Bitt Faulk
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#336054 - 12/08/2010 15:22
Re: 2 TB hard drive advice wanted
[Re: wfaulk]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 20/05/2001
Posts: 2616
Loc: Bruges, Belgium
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Any decent partitioning utility should show you that. Notably, that excludes Windows' builtin "Disk Management".  I thought as much! Do you know of any such (preferably free & windows) utility?
_________________________
Riocar 80gig S/N : 010101580 red
Riocar 80gig (010102106) - backup
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#336055 - 12/08/2010 16:01
Re: 2 TB hard drive advice wanted
[Re: BartDG]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 25/12/2000
Posts: 16706
Loc: Raleigh, NC US
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The only decent, free, non-sketchy, Windows utility I can find is TestDisk.
_________________________
Bitt Faulk
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#336056 - 12/08/2010 16:14
Re: 2 TB hard drive advice wanted
[Re: wfaulk]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 25/12/2000
Posts: 16706
Loc: Raleigh, NC US
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On a separate note, Is there, like, one lone guy in the former Soviet Union that does all the web design for every probably-malware piece of software coming out of there? All of those web sites look exactly the same. Which is too bad, because at least some of them are bound to be legit.
_________________________
Bitt Faulk
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#336057 - 12/08/2010 16:39
Re: 2 TB hard drive advice wanted
[Re: wfaulk]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 08/03/2000
Posts: 12338
Loc: Sterling, VA
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I've used this program in the past, and the site doesn't look like a Soviet spyware trap 
_________________________
Matt
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#336059 - 12/08/2010 20:24
Re: 2 TB hard drive advice wanted
[Re: hybrid8]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 29/08/2000
Posts: 14492
Loc: Canada
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Mark, do you expect there to be a performance benefit if I were to run with the drive in its factory un-jumpered (4k) mode? I cannot imagine where any benefit might come from, so, no. Cheers
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#336077 - 13/08/2010 04:43
Re: 2 TB hard drive advice wanted
[Re: wfaulk]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 18/01/2000
Posts: 5683
Loc: London, UK
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Any decent partitioning utility should show you that. Notably, that excludes Windows' builtin "Disk Management". On the other hand, Windows' built-in DISKPART will show you this information. You'll need to: C:\> DISKPART
DISKPART> sel disk 0
DISKPART> list part
DISKPART> sel part 1
DISKPART> detail part
_________________________
-- roger
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#336079 - 13/08/2010 09:20
Re: 2 TB hard drive advice wanted
[Re: Roger]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 20/05/2001
Posts: 2616
Loc: Bruges, Belgium
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Ah, I didn't know DiskPart would do that. Thanks Roger. I've used DiskPart to create some extended and logical partitions on the HD because as far as I can seen, the windows disk management software now only allows for the creation of "simple volumes"? (what the heck are those?) This new WD 2 TB drive is my data drive. I've bought an Intel SSD to use as my primary "OS" drive... works wonderfully with Windows7.
_________________________
Riocar 80gig S/N : 010101580 red
Riocar 80gig (010102106) - backup
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#336080 - 13/08/2010 10:48
Re: 2 TB hard drive advice wanted
[Re: BartDG]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 08/03/2000
Posts: 12338
Loc: Sterling, VA
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I just wanted to let everyone know that Newegg is having a 10% off sale on Seagate drives. Well, it's up to $10, but that's still something. Personally, I'm a WD guy as I've had the opposite experiences of several people in this thread.
_________________________
Matt
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#336081 - 13/08/2010 11:06
Re: 2 TB hard drive advice wanted
[Re: Dignan]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 20/05/2001
Posts: 2616
Loc: Bruges, Belgium
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Not even if they would give them for free, thanks. 
_________________________
Riocar 80gig S/N : 010101580 red
Riocar 80gig (010102106) - backup
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#336082 - 13/08/2010 11:54
Re: 2 TB hard drive advice wanted
[Re: BartDG]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 29/08/2000
Posts: 14492
Loc: Canada
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I do get Seagate drives for free -- there's a whole shelf load of them sitting in front of me.
And not a single one is actively holding data in any of our systems here.
Cheers
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#336083 - 13/08/2010 11:58
Re: 2 TB hard drive advice wanted
[Re: mlord]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 20/05/2001
Posts: 2616
Loc: Bruges, Belgium
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And not a single one is actively holding data in any of our systems here.
Cheers
Smart move if you value your data! Also, can I ask you Mark, with regards to that timer/head park issue of the WD20EARS... I've noticed you can also completely disable this timer with the wdidle3 program. Would you recommend this? Or does disabling this timer cause considerable risks? (more power consumption? disk more prone to crashes? something else?) Thanks!
_________________________
Riocar 80gig S/N : 010101580 red
Riocar 80gig (010102106) - backup
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#336084 - 13/08/2010 12:02
Re: 2 TB hard drive advice wanted
[Re: BartDG]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 29/08/2000
Posts: 14492
Loc: Canada
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For a system drive in a desktop, I would probably disable the timer completely.
But on my own 1.5TB drive, used for MythTV recordings, I set it to 30 seconds. Either seems fine to me. It supposedly helps reduce power consumption when idle.
But one user reported that leaving the timer enabled, seems to prevent the NORMAL ATA spindown timer from working, so the drive never spins down for him during long idle spells. Unconfirmed.
Cheers
Edited by mlord (13/08/2010 12:03)
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#336085 - 13/08/2010 13:11
Re: 2 TB hard drive advice wanted
[Re: mlord]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 20/05/2001
Posts: 2616
Loc: Bruges, Belgium
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Hmm... even though it's not a system drive for me, I do find it annoying that it takes a couple of seconds to respond when it's gone idle. I think I will disable the timer completely. Even if this means it will consume more power, how much more can that be anyway? It only consumes 6 watts when reading/writing and supposedly 3.7 Watts when idle. If this means the drive will consume 6 watts all the time (doubtful), I can live with that.
Thanks Mark!
_________________________
Riocar 80gig S/N : 010101580 red
Riocar 80gig (010102106) - backup
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#336086 - 13/08/2010 13:29
Re: 2 TB hard drive advice wanted
[Re: Roger]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 25/12/2000
Posts: 16706
Loc: Raleigh, NC US
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Windows' built-in DISKPART will show you this information I actually checked DISKPART before I suggested that he download something else. It doesn't show sector information for me: DISKPART> detail partition
Partition 1
Type : 07
Hidden: No
Active: Yes
Volume ### Ltr Label Fs Type Size Status Info
---------- --- ----------- ----- ---------- ------- --------- --------
* Volume 1 C NTFS Partition 40 GB Healthy System
_________________________
Bitt Faulk
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#336087 - 13/08/2010 13:57
Re: 2 TB hard drive advice wanted
[Re: BartDG]
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old hand
Registered: 15/02/2002
Posts: 1049
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Can you tell me where to find that new version of wdide? I did some googling and I couldn't find a working version of the utility.
Thanks,
Jim
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#336088 - 13/08/2010 14:11
Re: 2 TB hard drive advice wanted
[Re: TigerJimmy]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 20/05/2001
Posts: 2616
Loc: Bruges, Belgium
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Have a look here.
_________________________
Riocar 80gig S/N : 010101580 red
Riocar 80gig (010102106) - backup
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#336092 - 13/08/2010 15:24
Re: 2 TB hard drive advice wanted
[Re: BartDG]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 08/07/1999
Posts: 5548
Loc: Ajijic, Mexico
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Thank you. I have a pair of WD green drives that my wife will be bringing back from California next week (I'd have paid about $150 in customs duty if I'd had them shipped directly to me) and this is a newer version of the program than I had been able to find. My two 1-TB drives each have about 2 GB of space free, not even enough to properly defrag them. Times have changed... I remember when the very idea of having a whole gigabyte of hard drive was preposterous, what would anybody do with that much space? Oh, hell, I remember when I had four double-density 5.25" floppies in my CPM machine and was on top of the world with nearly three megabytes of storage. tanstaafl.
_________________________
"There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch"
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#336128 - 14/08/2010 03:21
Re: 2 TB hard drive advice wanted
[Re: tanstaafl.]
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enthusiast
Registered: 21/02/2006
Posts: 325
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Hi,
I lost 750GB to a Seagate drive. I didn't buy Seagate because I couldn't trust them. I use regular back-up procedures so, (in-grained from the old Windows driver development days), I lost very little. I have LOTS of WD drives (laptop in Empegs and desktop),and they seem real solid.
BTW, the WD 2TB I just bought is used only as a data drive for Music Database storage. It is not my system drive. With it installed, I still get a 5.9 Windows Experience becuase Windows Experience is really only interested in the system drive.
I also still have an old Shugart 8 inch dual sided floppy drive around here.
Ross
_________________________
In SI, a little termination and attention to layout goes a long way. In EMC, without SI, you'll spend 80% of the effort on the last 3dB.
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#336129 - 14/08/2010 05:56
Re: 2 TB hard drive advice wanted
[Re: wfaulk]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 18/01/2000
Posts: 5683
Loc: London, UK
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DISKPART ... doesn't show sector information for me Microsoft DiskPart version 6.1.7600
Copyright (C) 1999-2008 Microsoft Corporation.
On computer: ROGER-NC10
DISKPART> sel disk 0
Disk 0 is now the selected disk.
DISKPART> sel part 1
Partition 1 is now the selected partition.
DISKPART> detail part
Partition 1
Type : 07
Hidden: No
Active: Yes
Offset in Bytes: 1048576
Volume ### Ltr Label Fs Type Size Status Info
---------- --- ----------- ----- ---------- ------- --------- --------
* Volume 1 System Rese NTFS Partition 100 MB Healthy System Windows 7.
_________________________
-- roger
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#336130 - 14/08/2010 06:27
Re: 2 TB hard drive advice wanted
[Re: Roger]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 20/05/2001
Posts: 2616
Loc: Bruges, Belgium
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So you need to divide this number by 512 (number of bytes per sector), which results in 2048. I've already read that since Vista, this is the sector where the Windows OS starts the partition (was 63 before?). Does this number HAVE to be 2048 to be correct, or can this be any power of 2 number? BTW, I've also found another way to see the offset in Windows: How to tell if your disks are aligned?
How can you tell if a disk is unaligned at the Windows partition level? Remember the MBR statement — that x86 systems use the first 63 sectors. Usually there are 512 bytes per sector. If you do the math, 63 x 512 = 32,256. To verify this, log into a machine (physical or virtual) as an administrator that has not had its system volume aligned. Go to Start, then Run, then type in "msinfo32.exe" and press enter. Navigate down to Components, then Storage, then Disks. Notice that the partition starting offset for Disk #0, Partition #0 (the system volume) is 32,256 bytes. This means that the disk is not aligned.
If the partition Starting Offset is 65.536 bytes, the disk is aligned.  This looks like Windows XP though... not sure that "msinfo32.exe" command works the same in Vista or 7. I'll check when I'm back home and have access to my win7 system, but I can't check this on the PC I'm using now.
_________________________
Riocar 80gig S/N : 010101580 red
Riocar 80gig (010102106) - backup
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