I have been running 2x 2TB Advanced Format (4K) HDD's on Windows XP (it's just a media server so no need to upgrade) for a few years now and I only recently found out about the disk alignment issues if formatted in XP. So I checked the alignment and sure enough they were not aligned.
So I decided to realign the disks using MiniTool Partition Wizard, it's quite easy to do and works well and it now says the discs are aligned. But after running the re-alignment there was 1MB of unallocated space on the HDD. So I checked the disc properties and noted the first physical sector of the partition was now 2048 (it was 63 prior to running the alignment). Not thinking anything about it I just extended the partition to use the 1MB of unallocated space to utilise the whole HDD capacity. After this, the system boots fine and the alignment is still OK (according to the disc alignment check), however I checked the disc properties again and the first physical sector of the partition is now 0.
Now my question is, is the first physical sector of the partition being set to 0 OK? I've tried Google etc. and there's lots of things about the first sector being reserved for the MBR, but I can't find anything definitive so I'm not sure it's a problem or not.
So is this likely to cause me any issues moving forward? Or nothing to worry about?
Any advice would be much appreciated!
So I decided to realign the disks using MiniTool Partition Wizard, it's quite easy to do and works well and it now says the discs are aligned. But after running the re-alignment there was 1MB of unallocated space on the HDD. So I checked the disc properties and noted the first physical sector of the partition was now 2048 (it was 63 prior to running the alignment). Not thinking anything about it I just extended the partition to use the 1MB of unallocated space to utilise the whole HDD capacity. After this, the system boots fine and the alignment is still OK (according to the disc alignment check), however I checked the disc properties again and the first physical sector of the partition is now 0.
Now my question is, is the first physical sector of the partition being set to 0 OK? I've tried Google etc. and there's lots of things about the first sector being reserved for the MBR, but I can't find anything definitive so I'm not sure it's a problem or not.
So is this likely to cause me any issues moving forward? Or nothing to worry about?
Any advice would be much appreciated!