MiniTool Partition Wizard Server Edition is a magic partition manager which is developed aiming at Windows Server and Windows PC. It owns all-sided functions and helps maximize the storage space usage and minimize server downtime, keeping all servers running at great performance. MiniTool Partition Wizard is a complete & advanced Windows Partition Management tool that helps you perform a number of Drive management function on Windows partitions such as copy, merge, extend, wipe, delete, format or slit. The ultimate software gives you full control and lots of flexibility over your HDD, organize & manage Drives as your like.
The Align Partition feature added in MiniTool Partition Wizard helps users align the specified partition in several simple steps.
4K alignment is a quite important issue for hard disks which employ 4K sectors, including both Solid State Drive (SSD) and advanced formatted mechanical hard disk. And actually, it refers to the alignment between 4K physical sector and cluster.
A cluster is the smallest logical amount of disk space that can be allocated to hold a file. One cluster can only hold content of one file no matter how small the file is.From Wikipedia
When we are creating partitions on hard disks which use 4K physical sector, the partition always does not start from the starting position of a physical sector, which means physical sector and cluster will be shifted.
As a result, reading data saved in one cluster will access 2 physical sectors, thus increasing access time or slowing down read speed. Similarly, writing a file will operate 2 physical sectors at least, which definitely will increase writing times and waste disk space. Therefore, it is very necessary to perform the 4K alignment.
For specific steps, please see MiniTool Partition Wizard Tutorial below.
Step 1. Run MiniTool Partition Wizard to get its main interface.
Step 2. Select the partition which needs aligning, and then choose Align Partition from the left action panel or select Align from right-click menu.
Step 3. If it is misaligned, uses will see a pending operation on the left action pane. At this time, just click on Apply button to perform this operation.
But if the selected partition is already aligned, users will get the information below.
After that, partition alignment is completed via MiniTool Partition Wizard. It is so easy. However, to align multiple partitions on the same hard disk, please use Align All Partitions feature.