Actually, what I 'need to know' is how to set up traditional partitions such that the new 4 KB sector drives will work well with them - I'm not interested in using a utility like WD's to move them around later.

My impression is that you can handle pre-Vista NTFS (and Linux) partitions with cluster sizes that are multiples of 4 KB just by ensuring that the first sector of the partition (not including the MBR or EPBR track that may precede it) begins at a 4 KB boundary, because the file system clusters are aligned on 4 KB boundaries with respect to the beginning of the partition. I think FAT file systems don't follow the same practice, though - and while in both cases the offset of the file clusters can be controlled by a VBR parameter (for that matter, so can the size of the MBR 'track', I think - by an internal MBR parameter) it's probably safer not to change it to something non-standard (that might give conventional software fits - as already occurs when mixing use of pre-Vista Disk Management with 4-KB-aligned partitions and when mixing Vista/Win7 Disk Management with traditional partitions: in both cases you can wind up losing data because of incompatible handling) but rather to set up the partition start locations to make everything else 'just work' (that is, after all, the approach that WD takes). (Edit: You still have to tweak the Vista/Win7 Registry to make it play nice with the traditional layout, but at least that's possible.)

Just setting up some old-style partitions and checking the disk addresses of file clusters might be sufficient to ascertain what the default offsets are, but I'd feel better having something more authoritative to go by. If 4 KB sector drives ever stop offering to simulate 512 byte sectors older operating systems will be up the creek, but until then it would be nice to allow them to make good use of the newer drives.

Sorry if this is too 'soft' for this forum, but the topic's title had raised my hopes for that kind of information.

So theoretically it emulate (at least Datasheet say so). So why XP doesnt see that hard drive? Any ideea?

So theoretically it emulate (at least Datasheet say so). So why XP doesnt see that hard drive? Any ideea?

The drives normally have a sticker to say go to their website so that you can see what if any extra steps are needed to use the drive. did you do that

Good Point are all the chipset and storage drivers the latest ones. There may be some software support added.

it would be interesting to see if Windows 9x could detect the drive, or even FreeDOS

I wasn't suggesting that there was a driver issue. AISI, Windows XP should have native support for IDE controllers, so I doubt that it needs some kind of pre-installation driver, as is the case with SATA controllers. In fact it would be interesting to see if Windows 9x could detect the drive, or even FreeDOS.