"Disk Utility" - WARNING: The partition is misaligned by 1024 bytes....

[srs5694]

The forum software is flaking out and producing bogus multiple posts.

[srs5694]

The forum software is flaking out and producing bogus multiple posts today.

[yadadamean]

thank you so much! i will delve more into this problem of mine with the tools you have suggested. thank you once agian

[mastablasta]

Western digital has a link to a 3rd party programme that aligns the disks propperly. however i think that programme works in windows only.

edit: if you use Western digital disk: http://support.wdc.com/product/download.asp?groupid=805

[yadadamean]

Thank you all for all the help, but sorry to keep bombarding you all with more noob questions, but I have a few more.

So, I followed what srs5694 recommended and went on to find out whether or not my drive was advanced format. Through the disk utility on Ubuntu, I found the model name/no. it was a ToshibaMK7559GSM. I looked at the specs online, and found out that this particular line of HDD were Advanced Format. Although my hard disc is Toshiba, i followed mastablasta's advice and booted to windows and installed the WD Paragon disc alignment utility after searching online for other programs that might be more geared towards Toshiba fearing that the WD website would only supply something compatible only for WD hard drives. Upon installing it and running the program, it had noted that my hard drive was not able to be aligned. So, I ran msinfo32 on windows then checked the specs of my hard drive and it said that it was split up into 512 sectors, not 4096.

I'm assuming msinfo32 knows more about my hard drive than the stuff i've found online, and perhaps this is why the WD program doesn't work on my hard drive. OR does anyone know if the WD program only works on WD hard drives? thus, it won't work on my Toshiba? and is this the illusion that srs5694 was talking about and is msinfo32 wrong?

I'm sorry if this has already been posted out there in one of the other forums, but figured this is the easiest place for me to post. Thank you in advance!

[srs5694]

You may want to read this article I wrote for IBM developerWorks on the topic. Advanced Format disks use 4096-byte sectors internally, but they've got firmware that "translates" each sector into eight 512-byte sectors; the OS sees the disk as having the more common 512-byte sector size. This creates performance problems if the partitions aren't properly aligned because many filesystem data structures are 4096 bytes in size, resulting in read/write cycles instead of a simple write when changing these data structures.

Because Advanced Format drives present the illusion of 512-byte sectors, some disk utilities give incorrect information about them. I don't know anything about msinfo32 or the Toshiba MK7559GSM specifically; however, if Toshiba's specs say it's an Advanced Format drive, I'd trust those specs rather than the output of msinfo32.

I don't know if the utility you can get from WD would work on non-WD disks. It's possible it's coded to work only on WD disks. It's also possible it's seeing a filesystem that it can't handle. (I don't recall offhand if it'll work with Linux filesystems, for instance.)

I recommend you post the output of the following command:

sudo fdisk -lu

Please post it between [code] and [/code] strings; this will preserve the columns in the output, improving legibility.

The output will enable us to judge whether your partitions are properly aligned; and if they aren't, to tell you which partition(s) might need adjustment, and perhaps how to do it.

[yadadamean]

Thank. I have been reading your article. it is really quite informative. I hope this helps

Disk /dev/sda: 750 GB, 750153761280 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 91201 cylinders, total 1465144065 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System 
/dev/sda1              63      401624      200781    7  HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda2          401625   411570393   205583805    7  HPFS/NTFS
Warning: Partition 2 does not end on cylinder boundary.
/dev/sda3   *  1220169726  1426250699   103032877    5  Extended
/dev/sda7      1220169728  1230708735     5269320   82  Linux swap
Warning: Partition 7 does not end on cylinder boundary.
/dev/sda6      1230710784  1426024447    97651102   83  Linux
Warning: Partition 6 does not end on cylinder boundary.
/dev/sda5      1426025853  1426250699      104422    7  HPFS/NTFS
Warning: Partition 5 does not end on cylinder boundary.
/dev/sda4      1426250700  1465144064    19438650    7  HPFS/NTFS

[srs5694]

Of your partitions, only /dev/sda7 and /dev/sda6 are properly aligned. If this is an Advanced Format disk, this means that all your NTFS partitions (presumably holding a Windows installation) are improperly aligned and you won't get good performance from them. I've seen test results of improperly aligned NTFS partitions on Advanced Format disks. IIRC, write performance suffered by about 3x -- that is, a write operation that took 10 seconds on a properly-aligned partition took about 30 seconds on an improperly aligned partition. This was from Windows; I don't know how performance from Linux would be impacted.

Unfortunately, Windows can be picky about its boot partition; you can't change its start point and preserve its ability to boot, at least not with GParted or other Linux utlities. This fact closes the door on some possible solutions to the problem. My recommendations for how to proceed depend on what other utilities you've got on hand, how experienced you are, how much you need to get good disk performance from Windows, how much effort you're willing to put into it, and of course whether the disk really is an Advanced Format drive. Googling the drive's model number produced a PDF from Toshiba that clearly states the drive is an Advanced Format model, so if you're positive of the model number you posted, I'd say it's safe to conclude it really is that and will therefore suffer if the partitions aren't properly aligned.

I see several possible options for dealing with this:

• Ignore the issue. This is safe in the sense that you won't be risking your data, but of course you'll get poor NTFS performance.
• Back up, repartition, and restore. If you've got adequate Windows backup and recovery tools and suitable media, you can go this route. This is fairly safe if you're familiar with the tools, but it'll be time-consuming. You must be very careful when dealing with the repartitioning so that you create partitions that are properly aligned.
• Repartition (without backing up) and re-install Windows. This is fairly straightforward, but if you've got significant data in NTFS partitions already, it may not be practical.
• Check Toshiba's site for alignment-fixing tools. The WD tool might be written to work only on WD disks, which could explain its failure. If you find a suitable tool, repair could take hours, and there's a risk of doing damage, so I recommend backing up first.
• Use the Windows disk utilities to resize/move your NTFS partitions. As with using a Toshiba tool, this poses some risk of data loss, so I recommend backing up first.
• Use GParted or some other tool to resize/move your NTFS partitions. Again, there's a chance of data loss, so back up first. If you do this to the Windows boot partition, Windows will almost certainly refuse to boot, so you'll need to repair it (FWIW, I've never succeeded in doing this) or re-install Windows. Thus, I recommend this approach only on data partitions.

You can mix and match these solutions. For instance, you might decide to re-install Windows to its boot partition(s) and move/resize your NTFS data partitions.

You do not need to adjust the Linux partitions (/dev/sda6 and /dev/sda7), nor do you need to adjust the extended partition (/dev/sda3), despite the fact that its starting sector number is not a multiple of 8; the extended partition is just a placeholder for the logical partitions it contains, and it's their alignment that's important, not the extended partition itself.

Sorry to not have better news.

[yadadamean]

Success!!!....for now. but regardless, thank you for all the help and advice!
So, what I did was after hours of scouring the internet for disk alignment tools, I finally found one. And it was one that I already had, the Paragon Alignment Tool originally found on the WD support site. I found one that was compatible with other brands. and it worked! the program had to restart, when aligning my windows partition, so i believe it wiped out the MBR and booted into grub rescue. I just looked these forums how to restore windows 7 from grub rescue and it worked! so now i boot into windows, but i believe that there's away to restore grub2 so i can dual boot, but since I want to upgrade to ubuntu 10.10 and I backed everything up from my ubuntu and there was not much on it, I don't mind wiping it out and just installing a fresh 10.10.

Now, I'm just doing a lot of research on how to partition up my hard drive to have a shared data partition. and wow there is a lot of material out there on this! However, I recently discovered that my windows partition has gotten screwey. when i hibernate it, it'll instead restart. this is a good 2 or 3 days after I went through with the align and it didn't happen the first 2 or 3 days as i recall. only noticed it now. Anyway, more work to do before i leave here with my perfect partition, but thank you so much for all the help!

[gareththomasnz]

Disk /dev/sda: 2000.4 GB, 2000398934016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 243201 cylinders, total 3907029168 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00000000

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 1 3907029167 1953514583+ ee GPT
Partition 1 does not start on physical sector boundary.


sigh just installed natty on my new wd hdd

i want an xp partition too