SSD Alignment and Partitioning

I have a Latitude E6320 whose Liteon 256GB SSD failed. Contacted Dell and they sent a replacement SSD (newer version) which had a win 7 partition along with the Recovery partition and Diagnostic partition, etc. When I tried to restore a recent backup to the new SSD (using ShadowProtect), the image would not restore since the win 7 partition size on the new SSD was smaller than the backup image.

I then booted into the new win 7 and eventually loaded Partition Manager from Easeus. I then made the new SSD C: partition larger (by about 1GB) by moving the beginning into the free space of the Recovery partition (after shrinking it). The restore process now succeeded and things seem to be working properly.

My question relates as to whether a resizing/moving etc. operation can destroy the original correctly aligned partition structure on the SSD. I am assuming that once the SSD is aligned via an initial "alignment" partition (1MB?) that all subsequent partitions are automatically correctly aligned. Furthermore, any decent partition manager will preserve the correct alignment boundaries (multiple of 4096 bytes) when performing any of the asked for functions (moving, resizing, shrinking, etc.). Is my understanding correct? FWIW, I did check the new SSD C: partition with a software tool and it indicated proper alignment.

Thanks,
Harvey

 

You can check with a free disk benchmark tool called AS SSD.

 

In fact, that was the software tool I used to verify that the alignment was still correct. I'm just wondering whether or not operations on partitions (as indicated in my original post) via partition software can destroy the original correct alignment

 

Current tools will make sure the alignment is correct when doing partition operations.

From what I use...

Tools included Windows 7 and up --- diskpart, Disk Management, etc. --- will always align partitions to 1 MB boundaries (which is a multiple of 4096) so you're good there. Acronis True Image has supported proper alignment for the past several versions. GParted allows you to configure alignment for 1 MB boundaries or cylinder boundaries.

For other tools, just do some Googling to make sure the version that you're using explicitly indicates support for this.

 

Thanks for the info. I asked the question of Easeus (Partition Master) and essentially received the same reply. This seems to have been verified via the AS SSD tool after the partition resizing and subsequent restore.

Thanks,
Harvey