How should I format my new WD20EARS?

[Muse]

It is a Western Digital Caviar Green 2TB WD20EARS-00MVWB0 (3 platter, 667GB/platter), still in the unopened plastic bag. From Dell, lousy job of packaging, but even if it were received in bubble wrap I'd want to test, thoroughly.

I'm probably going to run it in an enclosure on an XP Pro machine (I have two enclosures, a WD 2TB Essentials and a Cavalry that currently has a 500GB WD drive). I know it has advanced formatting (4k sectors) and this is an issue with XP, and alignment is an issue. How should I format the drive? Does it matter that I'm running it via USB rather than internally to an XP machine? If you know, how should I test it? Thanks.

MOD EDIT: I'm locking this thread because it is essentially a repost of the one you created last night, plus it is in the wrong section. - Zap

 

[Muse]

Looks like WD's site has info, hopefully adequate

http://www.wdc.com/global/products/features/?id=7

http://wdc.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/wdc.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=3885

Doesn't appear to be a one size fits all solution, but it's unclear. They say they don't support installing in a 3rd party enclosure (although you can evidently do it, but they don't support it). They do support installing in a WD enclusure, so I might just do that for formatting and running their align utility.