Is your OS partition 4K aligned? A simple VBscript can check for you
The transition to 4KB sector HDDs will allow storage devices to more easily adopt larger capacities in both the notebook and desktop space.
While hard drives will transition to 4KB sectors and to maintain backwards compatibility, current Advanced Format 4KB HDDs (also known as 512e HDDs), will emulate 512-byte SATA communications to hosts and will operate at 4KB.
Advanced Format Technology has been adopted by Western Digital, Seagate and other manufacturers to increase media format efficiency, thus enabling larger drive capacities.
However, there's a performance issue with older operating systems, such as Windows XP when it's freshly installed on a new Advanced Format drive.
More info on Dell's website here.
Here's a link to a nice script that can check all the partitions on all your installed hard-drives and tell you whether the partition is 4K aligned (compatible with the new Advanced Format Drives).
This script can be run in all versions of Windows (XP and up).
Click the "Free Download" button, Extract from ZIP file, and double-click the VBS file to execute it.
The script DOES NOT tell you whether your HDD is AFD or not. It simply tells you if the partitions on it are properly aligned.
All credit goes to Josh from managedux.com, who came up with the code:
In case you're still running Windows XP, and you have it installed on an AFD - you can re-align the OS partition with alignment tools, such as the ones suggested below.
Link to Western Digital HDD Align utility here.
Link to Paragon Alignment Tool on Dell's website here.
Note: Seagate drives have some sort of physical implementation called SmartAlign that performs proper alignment within the drive itself, hassle-free without need for any software.
