What is partition alignment?

Partition alignment refers to the physical sector offset of partitions. This is done to make more efficient use of the physical space on hard drives, and it can optimize the performance of inputting and outputting data. Microsoft engineers have explained again-&-again that disk alignment can improves performance by not merely the nominal 10 – 15% in RAID systems, but commonly 20%, 30%, or more. Thus, it is able to provide a significant increase in system performance.

Why do you need to align partition?

As we all know, Windows built-in disk management can only the do the basic operations with partitions, like create and format. Although some advanced Windows OS have more features, it still can’t reach some partition operations.

As it mentioned above, partition alignment can improve the performance. Unfortunately, the disk management in all Windows OS can not align partitions. What a pity! However, the Diskpart.exe can check out whether the partition has been aligned perfectly or not.

Powerful partition alignment tool to align partition perfecly

Generally speaking, the offset number must be on a multiple of 1024KB. Since Windows built-in partition management can not achieve this goal, it’s time to find disk partition software to get rid of this bad situation.

AOMEI Partition Assistant Pro Edition is a powerful partition alignment tool to perfectly align partitions. You have several choices to align your partitions. Please see the pictures below:

                                                                                                                Partition Alignment

It is acknowledged that 1KB is equal to 2 sectors, so you’d better chose 2048sector, for the disk offset number must be 1024KB. After your choice, please click “Apply” in the toolbar to commit the task. If you don’t choose any selection, this tool will default “Optimized” for your partition, which can best optimize the operating system.

If you want to see the detailed procedures by this partition software, please see the article of align partition step by step.