Aligning drives in a RAID configuration

If two or more Advanced Format drives have been configured for RAID, running the Paragon Partition Alignment Tool on these drives aligns partitions at 2,048 sectors. Since a starting offset of 2,048 supports most stripe-unit sizes, performance would be enhanced6 due to the elimination of redundant disk operations.

Running the Paragon Partition Alignment Tool ensures support for the stripe-unit sizes associated with most RAID configurations, including RAID 0, 1, 5, and 10.7

If you wish to perform an unattended deployment for an aligned partition in a RAID configuration, you can use DiskPart or ImageX as long as the RAID volume had been set up before creating partitions and applying the image.

Using third-party deployment tools

Deploying an OS that is Advanced Format-aware (such as Windows 7) with a third-party deployment tool that is not Advance Format-aware may result in misalignment. Moreover, if you were to boot to an OS such as Linux or DOS, the partitioning tool may not be Advanced Format-aware in that particular environment.

Contact the vendor for requirements for running their deployment tool.

Enhancing performance with many small writes (as with ImageX)

While Windows 7 SP1 and WinPE 3.1 are already optimized, Microsoft Knowledge Base article KB982018 addresses performance degradation associated with a Windows 7 or WinPE 3.0 system performing many small writes to an Advanced Format drive. For example, using the ImageX command-line tool while booted to WinPE to apply a Windows image (.wim file) to an Advanced Format drive would take significantly longer than applying the same image to a traditional hard drive.

To optimize Windows 7 performance, you should apply the KB982018 hotfix to your HP system, as described in the article.

For WinPE 3.0, IT professionals can install KB982018 by following the procedure described in Appendix B: Procedure for installing KB982018 into WinPE 3.0.

Validating partition alignment

This section outlines the following options for validating partition alignment:

∙Using the Unattended Advanced Format Hard Disk Information Tool

∙Using Microsoft DiskExt (for Windows XP or later platforms)

∙Using the Windows Management Information Command-line (WMIC) utility (for Windows XP or later platforms)

∙Using DiskPart (for Windows 7 platforms)

Sample calculations are also provided.

6Compared to a scenario with misaligned drives

7Ultimately, alignment depend on stripe-unit size; however, 1 MB (2,048 sectors) alignment fits most RAID stripe-unit sizes.

10