spinjector Posted February 16, 2010 Share Posted February 16, 2010 Hi all,Does anyone know of a partition management utility that allows precise positioning of partitions, right down to a specific sector...? Independently of what it thinks are "cylinder boundaries"...?I ask in light of this Microsoft white paper: "Disk Partition Alignment Best Practices for SQL Server" http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd758814.aspxThis document essentially states that the idea of positioning partitions at cylinder boundaries has been useless since hard disk sizes passed the 8.4 GB barrier. Cylinder boundaries don't even exist any more, due the proprietary disk structures devised by manufacturers. It also explains that a properly aligned partition is a healthy thing for *any* operating system, not just Microsoft SQL servers.The document also openly admits that Microsoft & Windows has been doing it wrong all this time, thus perpetuating the misunderstanding. It's only with Windows 2008 & Windows 7 that Microsoft dispenses with the whole cylinder boundary concept.So...I'm hoping to find a utility that will allow me to move/resize existing partitions right down to the exact sector I want, without yelling at me about cylinder boundaries.I've *created* my partitions where I want them, but if I have to *resize* any of them, my cluster alignment will go to heck.Thanks. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jaclaz Posted February 17, 2010 Share Posted February 17, 2010 (edited) NOT the answer you are looking for, but maybe interesting to you.Be aware of possible issues if multibooting with non-vista/2008/7 OS (please read as XP and possibly 2003):http://www.boot-land.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=9897&hl=jaclaz Edited February 17, 2010 by jaclaz Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
spinjector Posted February 17, 2010 Author Share Posted February 17, 2010 Thanks. This is why I affectionately refer to Vista as "ME2"... =-) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jaclaz Posted February 17, 2010 Share Posted February 17, 2010 Thanks. This is why I affectionately refer to Vista as "ME2"... =-)Yep but the problem is actually in the change, which happened with Vista and is kept with 2008 and Windows 7, but that XP does not "like/understand".I guess one of the very rare occasions in which Vista itself is innocent. jaclaz Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pointertovoid Posted July 21, 2010 Share Posted July 21, 2010 Diskpar does it (Dispart is more recent and less usable):https://kb.wisc.edu/images/group14/4556/diskpar.exeit runs on Win, so you need several computers.Howto:http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb643096.aspx0 is the first disk, 1 the second...The starting offset is in sectorsThe volume size is in 2**20 bytes (MiB)It worked for me on Compact Flash Cards (but does it help, since the Wear Levelling Algorithm shuffles everything?) and should be even more useful on Raid arrays.Disks over 2TB will have sectors of 4kiB instead of 512B... How all this software will work then is just a surprise... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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