CLONING NON-AF-HDD INTO AF-HDD PROBLEM

I have a venerable 6 years old & reliable T60p with Windows 7
Ultimate SP1 64b which was clean-installed in a 500 GB Hitachi (prior to AF).
This HDD was latter perfectly cloned w/ Acronis and into a Hitachi
10K rpm 500GB, (prior AF). I do keep the originals drives as back up
and others safety necessities.
Others perfect clones have been created, here and in others
computers, and I mention this just to show that I am quite familiar
with the process. Some clones were performed using an external USB
case for the source drive. Others using the drive bay, (as drive 1
or D:) with a serial ATA drive bay adaptor and Acronis booted from a
USB. The target HDD always in the laptop as drive 0.

Since my present 500 GB is about 80% full, a new Hitachi was
obtained, or more accurately named now HGTS, a Travelstar SATA (6
GB/s) HTS721010APE630, 1Tb 7.2K rpm drive. HOWEVER, this is AF or advance format. The drive was configure, partitioned and formatted
default by W-7.

The Windows 7 SP1 64b clone with Acronis 2012 was pronounced
successful. There were no boot or activation problems experienced
but something was not right:

1] Windows Update did not work, showing a red writing warning.

2] MS fixit would not download to fix Win Update.

3] IE-10 had some display failures of several random sites.

4] Windows Live Mail would not start, claiming a corrupted calendar.
A repair did not correct the problem so WLM was uninstalled.
Downloading a file to run or save to reinstall, was blocked.

5] Outlook 2007 worked but pictures failed displaying as before, on
the previously authorized messages, neither they show the
message that allow selection of pictures for downloading.

6] Downloading drivers from Intel was a complete failure because
they could not be run or save.

There are more abnormalities, but this is sufficient to get the
flavor of the problems.

The drive was certainly much faster.

Acronis Alignment tool showed all drives to be perfectly aligned.

The special fix of Microsoft has been applied and do keep in mind
that this is Windows 7 Ultimate with SP1, 64b. Is suppose to be
aware of AF hard drives.

No attempt was made to change any software or configuration.

The cloning was repeated three more times in different ways, after
uninstalling some useless or even suspicious programs from the
source drive, to r/o errors. No change in the problems previously
related.

INTERESTINGLY ENOUGH (as is posible with this laptop) was to find
that, if this SAME target HDD is placed in the serial ATA drive bay
adaptor and booted (that would be as a drive 1), the OS performed
PERFECTLY without the multiple connectivity and software’s problems
related before.
NONE OF THE CONNECTIVITY AND SOFTWARE ANOMALIES RELATED HAS BEEN PREVIOUSLY AND SPECIFICALY CORRECTED!
The performance of the drive was not as fast.

The Win update worked and I was able to download and reinstall
Windows Live Mail, which worked satisfactorily. Replacing this clone
disk in the main drive position (disk 0) returned all the problems.

There is a driver usage difference between the two positions. So the
problem must be related to the one in use at the main drive
position. Intel driver diagnostic tool states the laptop has the
regular and latest drivers of the OS and chipset. However, some fell
that a especial AHCI drivers are needed.
I have read articles which recommend changing to the Intel RST
IASTOR.SYS file version 9.6 (the current one is 8.9.2.1002),
but I have not been successful in finding it. This is for the Intel
ICH7M/MDH SATA AHCI Controller.
Intel offers are v:11.x but they fail to install claiming: "This computer does not meet the minimum requirement for installing the software"

THE WAY I SEE IT: 1] A NEW DRIVER IS NEEDED. 2] THE ACRONIS 2012 PROGRAM IS NOT ABLE TO CORRECTLY CLONE OR RESTORE A BACKUP, FROM A NON-AF-HDD TO A AF-HDD.

As apparently AF is going to be standard with high capacity hard
drives w/ 4k sectors, Acronis is likely to have a great deal of
unsatisfied customers. IS THIS PERHAPS A CASE FOR THE ACRONIS
UNIVERSAL RESTORE TECNOLOGY?

I shall appreciate your assistance.