At the moment I have an XP SP3 system with:

HDD one
SATA ll drive.
WD 160GB partitioned for the XP OS

HDD two
PATA drive.
WD 160GB two partitions

Before I lose support for Windows XP I want to buy windows 8.1 and put the 8.1 OS on a brand new Western Digital 1TB WD10EZEX drive, which is an advanced format (4,096 byte sector) drive. I want to partition this drive into three partitions. C: OS, D: programs for OS E: files

So my question is:
When I boot into my old XP drive, will I be able to use the third partition (The files partition) of the new advanced format drive?

I have read these two WD links.
http://www.wdc.com/global/products/feat ... language=1
and
http://wdc.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/3885

I also have a couple WD advanced format PDF files but I’m still not clear on this.