Alignment to 2048 Option

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Mike
Posts: 49
Joined: Tue Sep 06, 2011 2:51 pm

Alignment to 2048 Option

Post by Mike »

As I posted in an IFL thread, I burned a CD of BIBM with the "Align to 2048" option checked. It was necessary to align the partitions on an SSD. Is there any harm is using that option on non-SSD drives, or should I maintain two CDs?

EDIT: As I have continued to research this issue, the SSD alignment "4K" parameter says that the offset of a partition should be evenly divisible by 4096, not 2048. Should BIBM have an "Alignment to 4096" option instead of or in addition to the 2048 option, or is there a lot of nonsense floating around? I sort of understand the value of having an SSD properly aligned, but there is so much bad information floating around that I would like support to weigh in on this question.
Brian K
Posts: 2214
Joined: Fri Aug 12, 2011 1:11 am
Location: NSW, Australia

Re: Alignment to 2048 Option

Post by Brian K »

Mike
Posts: 49
Joined: Tue Sep 06, 2011 2:51 pm

Re: Alignment to 2048 Option

Post by Mike »

It helps some, but not completely. If there were a "Align on 4096 Sectors" option instead of just the "Align on 2048 Sectors" option, I would be satisfied. Of all of the extensive reading I've done today on the topic, no one refers to 2048 in any literature that I've read. What prompts the question is that the offset on the third partition (recovery partition) is not evenly divisible by 4096. It is divisible by 2048.

As far as alignment not being necessary, several drive manufacturers are providing utilities to align the drives, so they must think it's a good idea. For what it's worth, which may mean nothing in the real world, after I aligned the partitions with BIBM, the "AS SSD" benchmark utility index went from about 275 to 400.
TeraByte Support
Posts: 3598
Joined: Thu May 05, 2011 10:37 pm

Re: Alignment to 2048 Option

Post by TeraByte Support »

2048 sectors = 1MiB alignment

You're probably referring to 4096 bytes which 1MiB is aligned to.

"Mike" wrote in message news:4150@public.bootitbm...

It helps some, but not completely. If there were a "Align on 4096 Sectors"
option instead of just the "Align on 2048 Sectors" option, I would be
satisfied. Of all of the extensive reading I've done today on the topic, no
one refers to 2048 in any literature that I've read. What prompts the
question is that the offset on the third partition (recovery partition) is
not evenly divisible by 4096. It is divisible by 2048.

As far as alignment not being necessary, several drive manufacturers are
providing utilities to align the drives, so they must think it's a good
idea. For what it's worth, which may mean nothing in the real world, after I
aligned the partitions with BIBM, the "AS SSD" benchmark utility index went
from about 275 to 400.

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