I have huge files saved on my PC and want to transfer them to another storage device. I want the files be organized when I save them and I want to use a usb advanced format drives that I just got. Do I have to change any settings in it so that I can achieve how I wanted my files to be saved?
As far as I know, the advanced format is a format used to store data on the magnetic disks in a disk drive that exceeds 512 bytes to 520 bytes per sector.Â
If you change the sector format convention to larger data sectors, such as the 4,096-byte structure, it will use the storage surface area more efficiently for large files but less efficiently for smaller files.
Keep in mind that when using Advanced Format drives with legacy operating systems, it is important to realign the disk drive using software provided by the hard disk manufacturer. It is necessary to avoid cluster straddling where a shifted partition causes file system clusters to span partial physical disk sectors. Realignment can help reduce the number of unaligned writes generated by the computing ecosystem.Â
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Hi,
You should have no problem on transferring the data using an AF USB. As long as the data is read and will be written in the same HDD and system.
Just be careful if you use Windows XP. You should use a HDD align software (usually comes from manufacturer)  in order not to have issue with reading of ECC at the end of 4K block.Â
I would highly recommend AF since it is becoming more an more used by many manufacturer and is much more efficient in platter blocks usage since you will have the ECC block after a 4K block and not after every 512 KB block.
Cheers,
Frazier
