SSD Alignment

toon_mad

toon_mad

toon_mad

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Hi guys, my mam just bought a laptop which I have been on setting up over the weekend, it comes with a 128Gb SSD and 1TB storage drive. It is at her house now but she is not using it yet for a while.

Anyway, typically I like to seperate/partition my Windows OS drive and split them into two, so instead of having one C: I split it into a C: and D: and then keep the C: for Windows etc and use the D: for programs etc, so I wanted to do the same on hers. The 1Tb would become a media drive for her documents and photos etc.

Anyway I used the Disk Management tool from the Administrator tools to create the second partition on the SSD and I remember needing to check if the partitions are aligned using diskpart, list disk etc. Well if I recall the partition for the C: was aligned ok, the offset might be of been something like 4096Kb but the other created parition had an offset of something like 204Gb (strange number anyway because barely anything has been put on, literally just Chrome and CCleaner).

I am sure the offset has to be divisable by something like 512 if I remember?

Not been 100% sure I downloaded a SSD Partition Alignment tool from here: http://www.disk-partition.com/help/align-partition.html but this reports both partitions on the drive are ok.

It's going to be a while before I get another look at it but how accurate are these SSD alignment tools typically? Diskpart showed to me what I thought looked like bad offsets for that one partition but the tool reports everything is ok, so not sure exactly which one to trust.

One last odd thing, the SSD shows up as a Samsung so I downloaded the Magician tool but for some reason it did not even detect a Samsung SSD in the laptop.

Appreciate some thoughts cheers :)
 
toon_mad said:
Well if I recall the partition for the C: was aligned ok, the offset might be of been something like 4096Kb but the other created parition had an offset of something like 204Gb

Appreciate some thoughts cheers :)
Click to expand...

Are you sure it was 204gb as it looks like you have miss read it as it should be 2048kb multiplied by 2 =4096 and that sounds about right.

From internet........

To see if your partitions are aligned correctly, hit the Start menu and type in msinfo32. Enter Msinfo32 and go to Components > Storage > Disks. Look for your SSD on the list and find the "Partition Starting Offset" item. If this number is divisible by 4096 (that is, if dividing it by 4096 equals a whole number and not a decimal), your partition is correctly aligned. If not, you need to realign it.
 
itchy said:
Are you sure it was 204gb as it looks like you have miss read it as it should be 2048kb multiplied by 2 =4096 and that sounds about right.

From internet........

To see if your partitions are aligned correctly, hit the Start menu and type in msinfo32. Enter Msinfo32 and go to Components > Storage > Disks. Look for your SSD on the list and find the "Partition Starting Offset" item. If this number is divisible by 4096 (that is, if dividing it by 4096 equals a whole number and not a decimal), your partition is correctly aligned. If not, you need to realign it.
Click to expand...

Thanks for reply, I cannot remember the number exactly but I am sure the second partition showed in GB and not KB, though that SSD align tool seemingly reported it as ok.

Next time I get access to her laptop I will try the MsInfo32 way and see what it reports.

If the partition is badly aligned do you know if there is an easy fix for this or would it require deleting and recreating the partition?

Cheers :)
 
toon_mad said:
Hi guys, my mam just bought a laptop which I have been on setting up over the weekend, it comes with a 128Gb SSD and 1TB storage drive. It is at her house now but she is not using it yet for a while.

Anyway, typically I like to seperate/partition my Windows OS drive and split them into two, so instead of having one C: I split it into a C: and D: and then keep the C: for Windows etc and use the D: for programs etc, so I wanted to do the same on hers. The 1Tb would become a media drive for her documents and photos etc.
Click to expand...

This whole thing is not a good idea. There is absolutely no good reason to split the SSD into a C: and D: drive. If you reinstall Windows those programs you installed to D: will likely not work correctly because you have destroyed the data they wrote to the system registry hive.

And there is no benefit to doing what you're doing. Additionally there are security implications. D:\Program Files will not have the same protection (NTFS permissions) that C:\Program Files has, making it easier for malware to compromise the system.

Paritioning a single large drive into a Windows partition and a data partition is fine. But you already have two drives; let Windows use the SSD as it pleases (on clean install it will create about 4 partitions, three of which are "hidden" from you), and use the 1TB drive as D: for your data.

Anyway I used the Disk Management tool from the Administrator tools to create the second partition on the SSD and I remember needing to check if the partitions are aligned using diskpart, list disk etc. Well if I recall the partition for the C: was aligned ok, the offset might be of been something like 4096Kb but the other created parition had an offset of something like 204Gb (strange number anyway because barely anything has been put on, literally just Chrome and CCleaner).

I am sure the offset has to be divisable by something like 512 if I remember?

Not been 100% sure I downloaded a SSD Partition Alignment tool from here: http://www.disk-partition.com/help/align-partition.html but this reports both partitions on the drive are ok.

It's going to be a while before I get another look at it but how accurate are these SSD alignment tools typically? Diskpart showed to me what I thought looked like bad offsets for that one partition but the tool reports everything is ok, so not sure exactly which one to trust.

One last odd thing, the SSD shows up as a Samsung so I downloaded the Magician tool but for some reason it did not even detect a Samsung SSD in the laptop.

Appreciate some thoughts cheers :)
Click to expand...

If the 1st partition is ~200GB, then the offset of the 2nd partition will be >200GB. The offset reported is from the beginning of the disk, not relative to the last partition.
 
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Agree with the above, it's a waste of time and probably just going to cause more problems/confusion in the long run as well as potentially mean that the manufacturer's own restore utilities won't work properly. Let Windows use the SSD, install all programs to that, then just ensure documents, media, downloads etc point to the HDD.

Best thing you can do is just ensure that all the bloatware and other junk is uninstalled to help speed things up a bit.
 
Alignment sounds like nonsense for a single disk

SYMPTOMS
Disk performance may be slower than expected when you use multiple disks in Microsoft Windows Server 2003, in Microsoft Windows XP, and in Microsoft Windows 2000. For example, performance may slow when you use a hardware-based redundant array of independent disks (RAID) or a software-based RAID.
 
This is not a good idea really, partitions will just slow things down but if you do it you don't need 3rd party tools just use disk manager in windows (right click on my computer and 'manage'). Will it not be easier just to create a folder i.e. 'Games' and just install things there? Its basically the same thing as making a partition...
 
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