Aligning SSD

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I decided to replace the old slow 5400 RPM hard drive in my Toshiba Satellite laptop with a new Kingston 256 GB SSD. I cloned the old drive to the new SSD drive and all went well. Windows 8.1 booted up fine and everything seemed to be normal, except that a couple of disk utilities I have reported that the partition on the new drive was not in alignment. I downloaded the latest version of the Paragon Professional Alignment Tool 4.0 which I purchased a couple of years ago. This version creates a CD/DVD which boots the computer and runs the alignment outside of Windows. When it runs there is a graphic displayed on the screen but nothing indicates that it is running the alignment. Then suddenly a menu appears that has no option to do the alignment. Thinking the alignment might have taken place in the background, I rebooted the machine and checked again to see if the partition was now in alignment. Both tools again reported that the partition still was not in alignment. I contacted Paragon for support and sent them log files but they have not answered after a week of waiting. Paragon is NOT a good company to deal with if you need support. I tried to do the alignment with a gParted CD but that also failed.

Does anyone have an answer as to why the SSD won’t align or how to tell what the problem is?

Thanks for your help,
Jarome

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Hi, Jarome.

Off the top of my head, could it be related to an OEM partitioning layout, like a hidden Restore partition, on the HDD/SSD clone?

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This article shows how to align your SSD.
http://lifehacker.com/5837769/make-sure-your-partitions-are-correctly-aligned-for-optimal-solid-state-drive-performance

cheers, Paul

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This article shows how to align your SSD.
http://lifehacker.com/5837769/make-sure-your-partitions-are-correctly-aligned-for-optimal-solid-state-drive-performance

cheers, Paul

Nice link…I saved it in my bookmarks.

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SUCCESS!! I tried the Paragon alignment tool again, thinking I had missed a step somewhere, but it still failed to align the SSD. I then tried the Gparted tool, following the link Paul suggested. It aligned the SSD on the first try with no problems. Quite a nice tool and definitely one to keep in your tool box. Thanks Paul and satrow for your help.

cheers,
Jarome

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Now go ahead and run “WinSAT.exe formal” (without the quotes) from the Windows 8.1 run box.

It’ll run through a WEI and optimize the drive also ensuring that TRIM is active.

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CLiNT,
I ran WinSAT. It checks a lot of things in the computer to come up with a Windows Experience Index score (WEI). As far as I can tell it, doesn’t change or optimize anything. The WEI is not displayed in Windows 8.1 so you don’t know what it is. Therefore, what good is it?

Thanks,
Jarome

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CLiNT,
I ran WinSAT. It checks a lot of things in the computer to come up with a Windows Experience Index score (WEI). As far as I can tell it, doesn’t change or optimize anything. The WEI is not displayed in Windows 8.1 so you don’t know what it is. Therefore, what good is it?

Thanks,
Jarome

WinSAT.exe formal ensures that a SSD drive, if present, is optimized for SSD usages.
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh825197.aspx
http://icomputerdenver.com/solid-state-drive-optimization-on-windows-8/

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I decided to replace the old slow 5400 RPM hard drive in my Toshiba Satellite laptop with a new Kingston 256 GB SSD. I cloned the old drive to the new SSD drive and all went well. Windows 8.1 booted up fine and everything seemed to be normal, except that a couple of disk utilities I have reported that the partition on the new drive was not in alignment. I downloaded the latest version of the Paragon Professional Alignment Tool 4.0 which I purchased a couple of years ago. This version creates a CD/DVD which boots the computer and runs the alignment outside of Windows. When it runs there is a graphic displayed on the screen but nothing indicates that it is running the alignment. Then suddenly a menu appears that has no option to do the alignment. Thinking the alignment might have taken place in the background, I rebooted the machine and checked again to see if the partition was now in alignment. Both tools again reported that the partition still was not in alignment. I contacted Paragon for support and sent them log files but they have not answered after a week of waiting. Paragon is NOT a good company to deal with if you need support. I tried to do the alignment with a gParted CD but that also failed.

Does anyone have an answer as to why the SSD won’t align or how to tell what the problem is?

Thanks for your help,
Jarome

This is the biggest reason, no matter what type of drive it is…ssd/hdd. That I always do a clean install on a bare drive. For me it just save a lot of headaches.

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Good information, CLiNT. Thanks for passing it along. My SSD is now perfectly aligned and optimized and I am a happy camper!

Jarome

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Jarome,

Alignment is never needed on a SSD. Originally, it was to allow the memory to read a sector, process it and then read the next sector, which took a quarter or so of a turn on the disk platter. (Memory was quite small in those days, remember?) These days, however, there is so much memory that an entire track is read into memory before processing, thereby making alignment obsolete, even with a HDD.

Bottom line: ignore the “alignment” messages.

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FWIW, TRIM is more important on SSDs than alignment. Glad both are now accomplished.

-- rc primak

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Both Trim and alignment are important for SSDs. You can lose performance if your SSD is not alligned properly:
http://www.wwpi.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=8840:ssd-storage-demands-proper-partition-alignment&catid=99:cover-story&Itemid=2701018

Jerry

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