From what I read, there are many potential issues for switching from IDE to AHCI under Windows XP and Vista, and I can’t test those so I just won’t cover them. Basically on Windows XP you’ll need to install AHCI drivers, on Windows Vista you’ll need to apply the latest updates.

For Windows 7, the drivers are already there, but you need to activate them. That is, if you install Windows 7 on a drive already configured in AHCI, you have nothing to do, all will be handled automatically, but if your hard drive was configured in IDE when you installed Windows 7, then you’ll need to enable AHCI drivers manually. To do so:

• Launch regedit (hit start button, type “regedit” and hit enter)
• Navigate to the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\iaStorV key, and change the Start value from 3 to 0
• Do the same with key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\msahci

That’s it, your Windows 7 is now ready to run on an AHCI drive. Now you just need to make the switch from IDE to AHCI in your BIOS.

Source: Microsoft Knowledge Base – Error message when you start a Windows 7 or Windows Vista-based computer after you change the SATA mode of the boot drive: “STOP 0x0000007B INACCESSABLE_BOOT_DEVICE”

Getting the tools

You’ll need AMD GPU Clock Tool 0.9.26.0 for HD 5870 (Guru3D mirror) to perform the clock changes, and optionally yet recommended GPU-Z to check the frequency and temperature.

Performing the overclock

AMD GPU Clock Tool is really quite straightforward. Since you are working on a Mobility 5650 chances are, though, that your laptop contains 2 GPU: an integrated one (something around Mobility Radeon 4200 is what I have in my Acer 5553G) and the discrete one. Well, make sure you pick the proper one in the Device field. To know if you’re on the right one, check the frequencies: the Mobility Radeon 5650 HD has a core clock (noted as “engine” in this tool) by default at 550 MHz, and a memory clock by default at 800. My Mobility 42XX chipset has those clocks respectively at 500 and 400.
To change the frequency, just edit the values in the engine and memory clock fields then press “Set Clocks”. That’s all

The only limitation with this overclocking compared to the one I previously presented about the GeForce 9650M GT is that I didn’t find a way to automate it: every time you restart your laptop the frequency of your GPU will be reset to factory settings, and you’ll have to run the AMD GPU Clock Tool and change frequencies again if you still want to be overclocked.

A few figures and illustrations to finish: I managed to raise my core to 586.7 MHz and my memory to 848.8 MHz, although I could probably get more (I didn’t try to push to the limit).

Here’s my GPU-Z validation (note that GPU-Z still bugs with this card: the base frequencies are the ones detected when opening the tool, so since I had already performed the overclock before launching GPU-Z my overclocked frequencies are the same as default). And finally some videos, I don’t really remember why I kept them in this post’s draft, but I don’t have the heart to delete them now ^^: How to overclock ATI Mobility 5650 to MAXIMUM, crysis with an Ati 5650 mobility.

Edit: harder, better, faster, stronger

Edit 2: some more details about temperature: when running at 100% alone (ie CPU not used or almost not used), my Mobility Radeon HD 5650 is around 80°C (79-82°C). When the CPU runs too everything gets pretty much warmer, and in those conditions the GPU already reached 100°C. Although I wouldn’t say this would be safe on the long term, it didn’t kill it on the spot either (but I could hear from the fan that it wasn’t very happy though ). Also at this temperature, with the CPU in the 80+°C too, the laptop case becomes a bit uncomfortable to lay your hands on indeed.

• 10-8_mobility_vista_win7_64_dd_ccc (Mobility Catalyst 10.8 for Vista/Se7en x64)
• 10-10_mobility_vista_win7_64_dd_ccc (Mobility Catalyst 10.10 for Vista/Se7en x64)
• 10-11_mobility_vista_win7_64_dd_ccc_ocl (Mobility Catalyst 10.11 for Vista/Se7en x64)
• 10-12_mobility_vista_win7_64_dd_ccc_ocl (Mobility Catalyst 10.12 for Vista/Se7en x64)
• 11-1_mobility_vista_win7_64_dd_ccc_ocl (Mobility Catalyst 11.1 for Vista/Se7en x64)
• 11-2_mobility_vista_win7_64_dd_ccc_ocl (Mobility Catalyst 11.2 for Vista/Se7en x64)
• 11-3_mobility_vista_win7_64_dd_ccc_ocl (Mobility Catalyst 11.3 for Vista/Se7en x64)
• 11-4_mobility_vista_win7_64_dd_ccc_ocl (Mobility Catalyst 11.4 for Vista/Se7en x64)
• 11-5_mobility_vista_win7_64_dd_ccc_ocl (Mobility Catalyst 11.5 for Vista/Se7en x64)
• 11-6_mobility_vista_win7_64_dd_ccc_ocl (Mobility Catalyst 11.6 for Vista/Se7en x64)
• 11-7_mobility_vista_win7_64_dd_ccc_ocl (Mobility Catalyst 11.7 for Vista/Se7en x64)
• 11-8_mobility_vista_win7_64_dd_ccc_ocl (Mobility Catalyst 11.8 for Vista/Se7en x64)
• 11-9_mobility_vista_win7_64_dd_ccc_ocl (Mobility Catalyst 11.9 for Vista/Se7en x64)
• 11-10_mobility_vista_win7_64_dd_ccc (Mobility Catalyst 11.10 for Vista/Se7en x64) NB: I downloaded this one from a third party site, not directly from AMD (I missed it). I didn’t test it either.
• 11-11_mobility_vista_win7_64_dd_ccc_ocl (Mobility Catalyst 11.11 for Vista/Se7en x64)
• 11-12_mobility_vista_win7_64_dd_ccc_ocl (Mobility Catalyst 11.12 for Vista/Se7en x64)

That’s right, I missed version 10.9. That’s pretty weird too, because that should have been the current drivers just when I got my laptop… Or maybe AMD skipped 10.9, it looks like I downloaded 10.8 in mid-October already.
Anyway, here’s again the link to the megaupload folder (FileSonic mirror).

Update (2011-01-29): added Catalyst 11.1
Update (2011-02-18): added Catalyst 11.2 + FileSonic mirror
Update (2011-04-02): added Catalyst 11.3
Update (2011-05-10): added Catalyst 11.4 and 11.5
Update (2011-07-02): added Catalyst 11.6
Update (2011-07-28): added Catalyst 11.7
Update (2011-09-03): added Catalyst 11.8 (on FileSonic only because MU uploader is down ATM)
Update (2011-09-08): mirrored Catalyst 11.8 on MU
Update (2011-10-02): added Catalyst 11.9, removed FileSonic mirror because the files there get removed too fast when there’s no downloads.
Update (2011-12-04): added Catalyst 11.10 and 11.11
Update (2011-12-31): added Catalyst 11.12

Update (2012-01-23)

All those files were stolen by the FBI, and I don’t have the resources to host them myself (for more details see this post). So I’m sorry but this archive is discontinued, feel free to thank Obama and the US government…
For posterity, here are the former links to the files:
http://www.megaupload.com/?f=TT2Z8M6G (folder)
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=1I2M2QFW (10.8)
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=Y7234J3S (10.10)
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=6ZUGB5SG (10.11)
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=Z1DTSV4C (10.12)
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=ZFLELCH2 (11.1)
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=9MOAQLXQ (11.2)
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=MF2W7YMM (11.3)
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=GJJARTN8 (11.4)
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=WM1BEHFH (11.5)
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=ULJF05ZX (11.6)
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=G8FD5OFH (11.7)
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=YY1RSZV3 (11.8)
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=31ZPA1UE (11.9)
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=I7FO4ATO (11.10)
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=DIPX28KJ (11.11)
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=T1DSHYML (11.12)

As mentioned in a previous post, I wanted to find a solution using fdisk and gparted. I used the latest ones available for Ubuntu 10.04 by the beginning of August, but since we’ll be doing everything quite manually, older versions have a fair chance to work decently too. Note that I only wanted to create one big extended partitions with many logical ones inside. Also, when I’ll talk about a sector, I’ll refer to the virtual 512 bytes sectors.

First try

I had great hope after finding what seemed to be a great tutorial on Linuxconfig.org. Pretty short and crystal clear: to make it even shorter:

• change fdisk units to sectors (once fdisk is running, type “u”)
• start the extended partition at sector 64 (the default is 63), and end it at sector (total amount of sectors on the drive – 1)
• then make partitions with a size which is a multiple of 64 sectors, leaving a space of 64 sectors between them

So I made myself a little OpenOffice spreadsheet (first sheet) to help me calculate all this, and then applied to the drive with fdisk (we’ll see the syntax in the paragraph where the partition scheme actually works). I then formatted using gparted (don’t edit the partitions, just right-click the partitions and select Format to).

Checking and correcting

I used the Paragon version of WD Align, because I started using it when I used to have a few data on the drive. I guess you won’t have data at that point, so you should rather get the Acronis version, which is way much faster, not even for fixing but also for detection/testing (I used it too, later). Anyway, I ran the thing and only one partition was properly aligned… so I made the software fix them, then analyzed the correction. If you want to details (not really explained though, that’s just some of the raw calculations I tried), check out the second sheet on the previously-mentioned OpenOffice spreadsheet.

The proper method

Here are my conclusions from the correction performed by the WD Align tool:

• The extended partition should start at sector 64 (it could probably start elsewhere too, like maybe at 2048 or 4096, but 64 is just fine according to the WD Align software, so why waste more? ) and end at sector (total amount of sectors on the drive – 1).
• The first logical partition should start at sector 4096 (I don’t know where it should start if the extended partition started somewhere else than s64).
• Logical partitions should have a size, in 512B sectors, in the form of 2048*n, where n is an integer. Since this include both the first and last sectors, this means that the last sector will be [first sector]+(2048*n)-1 (I know, the parenthesis aren’t necessary, but just in case someone wouldn’t know, it does no harm either).
• Any logical partition should start 2049 sectors after the previous one ended. Or, more accurately: [first sector of partition 2]=[last sec of P1]+2049. Which means there’s a gap of 2048 sectors between 2 partitions.

A quite noticeable consequence of those rules is that partitions will start on an even sector, and (except maybe for the extended one) end on an odd sector. Another noticeable thing is that partitions size will be best determined in mebibytes (MiB), since 1 MiB = 2^20 Bytes = 2048 sectors. So on the third and final sheet of the spreadsheet, the partition size will be measured in MiB.

Creating and formatting the partitions

Now that you figured out the proper partition sizes, you can create them with fdisk. The quick syntax guide for this would be:

• su: login as root (“super user”)
• fdisk /dev/sda: launch fdisk for drive sda. If you’re on en external drive, this will probably be sdb or more. Make sure you’re working on the right drive before messing with it! A good check could be simply to list the existing partitions (see next step)
• p: displays the partition table (very important: this includes all pending operations on the drive – fdisk won’t write anything to the disk until you “write table to disk” – see later)
• u: toggles between cylinders and sectors as the display and entry unit. You’ll want to use it to switch to sectors before doing anything else, as sectors are all what this guide is about!
• n: create a new partition, it will then ask whether you want a primary (“p”), extended (“e”) or logical (“l”) partition, then ask for starting sector then ending sector.
• w: “write table to disk and exit”: this will execute all pending operations and close fdisk. If you don’t want to apply your changes, use “q” instead.

In the end, this will look like this

That’s pretty much all you should need. In case you need more, you can always list the commands by using “m” (menu). Finally, here are the commands I used to create the partitions on my WD20EARS (NB: that’s only the part when I delimit the partitions, I removed the preparation and final execution):
n
e
64
3907024064

n
l
2956308480
3907022847

After you’ve created the partitions (and written the changes), you can simply format them using gparted, as mentioned at the end of chapter 1. The only weird thing is that gparted will display unallocated 1MiB blocks between every partitions. Just ignore those. That’s how it will look:

And here you are, with a properly aligned drive (you can switch back to Windows and run Acronis WD Align to be sure).

After such a long time without any Dr Who trailers, I couldn’t resist the temptation in such an appropriate setting ^^

What’s the Advanced Format Technology (AFT)?

To make a long story short, hard drives are organized into sectors. Each sector starts with a Sync/DAM block, then come the “real” data, then finally an Error Correction Code (ECC) block… and then a gap before the next sector (or rather, the next Sync/DAM block). For the last three decades, sectors have been 512 bytes big. This made sense when drive sizes were around some megabytes (since you can’t place 2 files inside 1 sector, the sector size determines the minimum space a file can use), but with today’s terabyte drives, this just doesn’t seem as appropriate (plus anyway modern file systems regroup sectors in indivisible 4KiB clusters). AFT simply changes the sector size to 4096 B (512 B x 8).
With this larger sector come the following advantages:

• for a 512 byte sector you needed 40 bytes of ECC, but for a 4096 bytes sector you can use only 100 bytes of ECC, a 220 bytes saving from what it takes for eight 512 bytes sectors (8×40-100=220).
• for a 4096 B sector you only need one Sync/DAM block, down from 8 blocks if you have 8 512 B blocks (although I couldn’t find anywhere if an AFT Sync/DAM block if bigger than a normal Sync/DAM block)
• each 4096 B sector, you get a sector gap, while on non-AFT hard drives you get a sector gap after each 512 B sector. So on AFT you have 8 times fewer sector gaps.

So globally, the main point of this is to stick more data into the same physical space (about 7-11% more according the sources I found – see at the end of this chapter – so the picture above is quite a bit exaggerated ). The use of one bigger ECC block instead of several smaller ones also improves burst error correction by 50% according to WD’s white paper on AFT. Finally AFT allows better performances (not a lot faster, but still faster): I didn’t find precisely why, but I guess this has to do with 8 times fewer sectors to read (since an AFT sector has 8 times more data) and smaller areas to read (since the AFT equivalent of 8 legacy 512 sectors is smaller).

I won’t go deeper into details, if you want further reading there you go:

• Western digital – Advanced Format Technology – White Paper (PDF)
• HotHardware – Exploring WD’s Advanced Format HD Technology
• AnandTech – Western Digital’s Advanced Format: The 4K Sector Transition Begins

What’s the problem with Advanced Format Technology?

As above-mentioned, 512 bytes sectors have been around for like an eternity. Thus any other sector size isn’t supported by, for instance Windows XP or even recent versions of Linux. To make the disk work anyway in all cases, Western Digital made it emulate 512 bytes sectors (see at the end of the white paper). So AFT disks will work in old OSes. But they won’t work in an optimal way: the OS will believe the sectors are 512 B, and thus will misalign clusters with physical sectors, which can be pretty much harmful for performance (although not at all physically damaging for the disk).

Ok, now what’s the solution?

If you’re on Windows or Mac OS 10.4+ using the GUID Partitioning Table scheme (GPT), check WD’s AFT page. If your Windows version is Vista or Seven, or if it’s XP and you’re sure you won’t need to edit any partition after using WD Align, that will be all.

Otherwise:

• if you’re on Windows XP and willing to edit your partitions after using WD Align, you’ll need either a third-party partitioning software, or Linux (I used Ubuntu 10.04 on this). This is because once you have aligned partitions using WD Align you shouldn’t EVER use Windows’s built-in partitioner (I tried that, it destroyed all my partitions in a fraction of a second) (note that you can still use Windows disk manager, just don’t try to modify the partitions with it on the whole AFT drive).
• if you’re on Linux: if you’re on kernel 2.6.34 you should be fine. Otherwise, if you have parted in its version >= 2.1 you can use it with the -a optimal parameter and it should create properly aligned partitions. The source of this information is WD’s Knowledge Base. They claim that Ubuntu 10.04 and Fedora 13 should align AFT drives properly (implicit: because they’re on kernel 2.6.34?). Well, Fedora 13 doesn’t, and has kernel 2.6.33 if I remember well, and neither does Ubuntu 10.04 (kernel 2.6.32). But Ubuntu 10.04 does have parted version 2.2.

OK, so, solved your problem yet? If not, I guess you’re either:

• On Mac OS using Apple Partition Manager (APM): you’re screwed, really. Yet, it works, after all… just not as fast as it could…
• On Windows XP, willing to edit the partitions later and not willing to buy a specific piece partitioning software: get Linux (you can just use some LiveUSB Linux: no installation required, can install/update packages if you configure persistent storage properly on your USB key)
• On Windows XP, willing to edit the partitions later and not willing to buy a specific piece partitioning software nor to get Linux. Well, you’ll have to make a choice: either don’t edit the partitions or get what it takes to edit them.

Or finally, you might be on Linux, without kernel 2.6.34 and not willing to use parted (or not having a recent enough parted), or just curious about aligning the partitions manually. Well, lucky you: I came up with a solution using GNU fdisk!

Update (17 August): here it is, finally, the fdisk + gparted guide: Dealing with WD Advanced Format hard drives on Linux (part 2).

So, to sum up, NVIDIA graphics drivers version 258.96 may create trouble on the Asus M50Vn with a GeForce 9650M GT running Windows XP. If you experience random crashes with this notebook and those drivers, try to downgrade to 197.16.