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    XPS 15 1502: Check Partition Starting Offset please

    Discussion in 'Dell XPS and Studio XPS' started by toronto, Nov 14, 2011.

  1. toronto

    toronto Notebook Deity

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    For those of you with XPS 15 1502 with stock HD as shipped by Dell, and who have not done clean Windows install, please check this for me.

    Start > in the search box type: System Information

    In the System Information window, open Components, then Storage, then Disks.

    About halfway down will be details for the first partition:

    Partition: Disk #0, Partition #0
    Partition Size:
    Partition Starting Offset:

    What is your Partition Starting Offset for Disk #0, Partition #0 ?
     
    toronto, Nov 14, 2011
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  2. hanming

    hanming Notebook Evangelist

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    size:452.09 GB
    offset: 1,048,576 bytes
     
    hanming, Nov 14, 2011
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  3. Kallzeh

    Kallzeh Notebook Enthusiast

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    Partition Disk #0, Partition #0
    Partition Size 101.94 MB (106,896,384 bytes)
    Partition Starting Offset 32,256 bytes
    Partition Disk #0, Partition #1
    Partition Size 8.43 GB (9,047,781,888 bytes)
    Partition Starting Offset 106,954,752 bytes
    Partition Disk #0, Partition #2
    Partition Size 457.23 GB (490,950,511,104 bytes)
    Partition Starting Offset 9,154,738,176 bytes

    Hope this helps.
     
    Kallzeh, Nov 14, 2011
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  4. toronto

    toronto Notebook Deity

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    Thanks Kallzeh, that's the same as I have for the first partition.
    I've been reading about mis-aligned Starting Offsets. Mostly it seems to be an issue for SSDs, but some seem to say it's important also for hard drives and, if so, 32,256 is not an ideal offset. I don't really know yet.

    hanming's has not quoted his first partition, because the size is wrong. (Unless he changed his partitions and removed the Dell diagnostics partition, about 102 MB, which ships as the first partition.)
     
    toronto, Nov 14, 2011
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  5. hanming

    hanming Notebook Evangelist

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    That's weird. I don't have partition #2 but i have a recovery. How do i install the dell diagnostic back?
     
    hanming, Nov 14, 2011
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  6. dg1261

    dg1261 Notebook Geek

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    Yes, alignment can also improve the efficiency of hard drives. It's not much of an issue with small amounts of data, but supposedly has benefits when transferring large blocks of data, and especially with RAID systems (see here for an introduction to that issue).

    Microsoft has been making a steady push toward aligning data sectors to improve data transfers for some time now. The most visible effect has been their abandonment of the legacy (CHS) partition layouts in favor of their new partition layouts with boundaries aligned on multiples of 2048 sectors, but beyond that I've read Microsoft has also been working on repositioning the MFT, pagefile.sys and hiberfil.sys within the partition to take advantage of the same principles.

    The new-style partitions (sometimes called MB-alignment because 2048 sectors comprise 1 MB on today's 512-byte/sector disks) were rolled out at the same time as Vista, although the matter is independent of the OS. (In fact, Vista and Win7 work fine in legacy CHS-aligned partitions, while XP, 2K, and even Win98 have no trouble running in the new MB-aligned partitions.)

    Note this really has no effect on DOS efficiency, though, so there's really no point to MB-aligning a partition that will be used for DOS.

    Keep in mind the DellUtility partition is, in fact, a DOS partition. The Dell Diagnostic utility that is launched from that partition is a DOS application. Accordingly, Dell's practice has been to use both types of alignment on factory partitioned hard disks. The first partition is the DellUtility partition, and is CHS-aligned in legacy fashion. The Recovery and OS partitions, however, are MB-aligned. This has no adverse effects on the operation of Windows, and MB-aligning the DellUtility partition would have no benefits.
     
    dg1261, Nov 16, 2011
    #6