Are you ready for Advanced Format?
- Are you a developer of software who creates or modifies hard drive partitions, or enables hard drive duplication, cloning or imaging?
- Are you planning to interface with, integrate or use a 4K, Advanced Format drive that supports 512-byte emulation?
- If yes, has your application, system or offering been optimized to accommodate the relationship between 512-byte emulation in Advanced Format hard drives and hard drive partition alignment?
- Are you considering using 4k native Advanced Format hard drives in a storage solution?
- Do you use or offer a software solution that frequently issues write operations in data-package sizes less than 4K bytes?
- Are the block sizes written by the software applications you use, support or distribute evenly divisible by multiple of 4K-bytes?
- Are all starting locations of the Write operations you issue on 4K boundaries?
- Do you utilize any operations that may bypass the Operating System or send commands directly to the hard disk drive?
- Are you using any of the following: Network Download, Ghost Software, ImageX Software or similar program?
- If using Ghost, are you using version 11.0 or later and using the "-align=1MB" feature for 4K alignment?
- If using ImageX, do you have the latest build image from your MS TAM?
- Are you using Win PE version 2.1 (Vista), Win PE 3.0 (Win 7)?
- Are you using the latest Intel Storage Driver revision 9.6.0.1014 or later?
- If you are an OEM, system integrator or have a designated Microsoft TAM, do you have the latest Microsoft OS builds or discussed 4K awareness with Microsoft?
Are you utilizing a high volume manufacturing Imaging Process to clone hard drives?
- Are you using a Disk Duplicator for Cloning?
- If yes, is your reference drive optimized for and the image aligned to 4K boundaries?
- Is your duplicator software 4K aware, i.e. issues writes in 4K-block increments?
If you answered "yes" to any of the above questions, we recommend you engage in readiness testing to prepare for the upcoming transition to Advanced Format hard disk.
