Errors restoring to 4k-sector disks on XP
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#19 Errors restoring to 4k-sector disks on XP
ODIN seems unable to restore to disks with 4k sectors under XP. Under windows 7, it seems that the OS abstracts from the physical sector size. Under XP, ODIN produces INVALID_PARAMETER errors on WriteFile/ReadFile on several occasions for not obeying the sector size (the first appearing on writing the boot sector, but after locally fixing that I found that there are more problems of this kind later on, so I gave up my idea of a "quick fix").
It may even be driver dependent instead of OS dependent, so I would not bet on 4k drives working in Windows 7 under all circumstances. My version of the documentation of ReadFile/WriteFile states that sector sizes have to be obeyed and indicates no exception for newer OS revisions.
An additional note: It seems that the "candidate" (a HGST Z5K500-320) is a 4096Bytes/Sec item with 512-Bytes/Sec-Emulation. Under Windows 7, it appears to work like a regular 512B/Sec disk (probably just slower than necessary) due to the emulation. Under XP, it only accepts 4k-aligned operation, the emulation seems not to be effective there. So the problem is even harsher, "true 4k"-disks without emulation will probably not even work under Win7 or newer with ODIN.