Paragon Alignment Tool

michaelst · 07 May 2011

Just a little information about this tool.
My C: drive was not correctly aligned. It wasn't a big deal. Everything worked fine.
But, being a geek like the rest of you, I decided to try PAT and see if it really works.

First off, it's like $30. Not that much, but it's a one time tool.
It comes with a .exe file to create it's own rescue disk. Basically, it puts everything back to the way it was before it started. Thankfully, I didn't need it.

The application installed with no problem at all, and it does allow you to do an analysis on all connected drives, including external USB drives. It graphically shows your drives, and by color, shows which, if any need alignment. Green-good, Yellow-bad.

When you select to align, it reboots to a Pre-windows full (low res)screen showing the progress of the alignment.

My 120gb SSD took approximately 20 minutes to process.
It rebooted the PC, and opened the application and reported it as successful.
I had no other partitions on this drive, hidded or otherwise.

I ran Crystal Disk Mark before and after the alignment.

After reports nearly a doubling of the 4k and 4k-64thrd writes, and an almost 33% increase in the 4k reads.

Overall, I'd give it a thumbs up :)

SIW2 · 07 May 2011

Thanks for the report Michael.

Seems to have worked well for you.

whs · 07 May 2011

Very good. Paragon makes good products - and what else would you expect from a German company, LOL. The performance data is interesting. Thanks for posting.

For future alignment questions including checking the alignment you can also refer to my little tutorial: SSD Alignment

sygnus21 · 07 May 2011

michaelst said:

Just a little information about this tool.
My C: drive was not correctly aligned. It wasn't a big deal. Everything worked fine.
But, being a geek like the rest of you, I decided to try PAT and see if it really works.

Yeah I bought it a while back, nice tool to have. In case you (anyone else) didn't know, It'll also align spinner (mechanical) drives as well.

Thanks for sharing.

FranklinBoyce · 24 Oct 2012

Is there a freeware that can do the same job for my Samsung/Seagate Spinpoint M8 1TB?

The Samsung Advanced Format Utility seems only available for HDDs up to 750GB.

Samsung Advanced Format Utility | Seagate

ignatzatsonic · 24 Oct 2012

FranklinBoyce said:

Is there a freeware that can do the same job for my Samsung/Seagate Spinpoint M8 1TB?

The Samsung Advanced Format Utility seems only available for HDDs up to 750GB.

Samsung Advanced Format Utility | Seagate

Is your Spinpoint known to be misaligned?

Drives are typically aligned correctly during Windows installation, but you can do a manual alignment if you want using Diskpart. See WHS's tutorial that he links in post # 3.

FranklinBoyce · 24 Oct 2012

Yes, it is misaligned because I cloned from my old non-AF HDD.

I used the Partition Offset Information utility to confirm that.

Partition Offset Information

I will look into Diskpart. Thanks!

ignatzatsonic · 24 Oct 2012

I'm not sure you can do a re-alignment with Diskpart on an existing installation. It may be possible with Partition Wizard. I'm just guessing as I have never faced the problem.

You may have to use the Paragon tool referred to in this thread.

DeaconFrost · 24 Oct 2012

I think I'd rather do a clean install than shell out any money for a one-time tool. However, it's nice to know something exists, and works.

That beind said, I thought I saw an option to align partitions in Partition Wizard, but I would strongly recommend backing up anything important off that disk before trying it.

EDIT: Yes, looks like it should handle alignments.
http://partitionwizard.com/free-partition-manager.html

FranklinBoyce · 24 Oct 2012

I tried re-aligning with Partition Wizard. It did not work for me. I could not start Windows and repair disc also didn't help this time. Whoever wants to give Partition Wizard a go, I urge you to be very careful.