Guide: How to align boot partitions without losing data

[Tomy B.]

How to check is Your disk correctly aligned:

Download diskpar.exe from here and save it in Windows\System32 folder.

Open Command Prompt (Win key + R, type "cmd" and hit Enter). Type diskpar -i # (# - number of your disk) and hit Enter and You should see something like this.

Microsoft Windows XP [Version 5.1.2600]
(C) Copyright 1985-2001 Microsoft Corp.

C:\Documents and Settings\DerleT>diskpar -i 1
---- Drive 1 Geometry Infomation ----
Cylinders = 486
TracksPerCylinder = 255
SectorsPerTrack = 63
BytesPerSector = 512
DiskSize = 3997486080 (Bytes) = 3812 (MB)

---- Drive Partition 0 Infomation ----
StatringOffset = 65536
PartitionLength = 3997171712
HiddenSectors = 128 (This number should be 2048 and You are fine, no matter which drive You use)
PartitionNumber = 1
PartitionType = b

End of partition information. Total existing partitions: 1



!!! MAKE A BACKUP OF YOUR HDD IN CASE THINGS GO WRONG !!!

USE AT YOUR OWN RISK

1. Download GParted Live (100 MB) from here and burn it to CD.

2. Boot into GParted GUI (just hit ENTER until screen like this one appears).

3. Select partition on disk You want align.



4. Select "Resize/Move" option and shrink partition (in my case "Minimum size" is 26574 MB, so I set it to 28000 MB) and set "Free Space Precedin" to 10 MB just to make some free space "in front" of partition so we can set larger offset then 63 sectors.



5. Left CLICK on "Resize/Move", then on "Apply", again on "Apply" and wait few minutes (I hope You made a backup just in case...). Once everything is over is should look something like this.



6. Open "Terminal" (third icon on top of screen):
- type "parted /dev/sda" and hit ENTER ("/dev/sda" is name of my drive, maybe You have something else)
- type "mkpart" and hit ENTER
- type "primary" and hit ENTER
- hit ENTER
- type "63s" and hit ENTER
- type "127s" and hit ENTER
- type "quit" and hit ENTER
- type "exit" and hit ENTER



7. Now restart GParted GUI (red icon labeled "Exit" on top of screen, select "Reboot" and "OK")

8. When GUI starts again GParted screen should look like this one.



9. Now select partition with data on it, select "Resize/Move" option and set "Free space preceding" to 0 MB, "New Size" to maximum (in my case "Maximum size" was 61052 MB so I set that for "New Size") and uncheck "Round to cylinders".



10. Left CLICK on "Resize/Move", then on "Apply", again on "Apply" and wait few minutes.

11. Once everything is over, select that small partition we created earlier (it should be one with size of 32.50 KiB) and choose "Delete", then "Apply" and again "Apply".

12. Close GParted application and turn off Your PC (red icon labeled "Exit" on top of screen, select "Shutdown" and "OK").

13. Boot into Your main OS and that's it!


All info for making this guide is from this site.

[FruitSaladExtreme]

Thanks, time to use my 60gb OEM -.-

[felix_w]

Thanx! I've seen this guide in the Ocz forums again, tried it once with no success, but it's really great that you have given more detailed instructions and screenshots...I'll try it again using your guide.

[Tomy B.]

I hope it will work this time!

Let us know how it ended.

BTW: on OCZ forum all You have is link to page I added at and of this guide.

[felix_w]

Originally Posted by Tomy B.

I hope it will work this time!

Let us know how it ended.

Previous time i tried i couldn't even run the Resize/Move command. There was an error and after that my XP installation could not be recognized, laptop could not boot. I'll write down any errors if any, in my second try.

Originally Posted by Tomy B.

BTW: on OCZ forum all You have is link to page I added at and of this guide.

Yes, but this time screenshots are included, so it's easier for someone who doesn't have any clue about Gparted liveCD to do a task like that (or at least try... ). Thank you for your effort & time spent to do this!

[TwiztidKidd]

Aren't you supposed to check for any disk errors with chkdsk on reboot (5 step process) and then defrag that disk before you start any partitioning?

[Tomy B.]

Can't say will it do any difference if You run chkdsk and defragmentation before whole process (for SSD it's good not to run defragmetation).

I done it exactly as I wrote it.

On XP it'll automatically run check disk after 13th step (5 step process with blue background).

[TwiztidKidd]

Well I only used gparted like once and the video was FUBAR (the top part of the screen displayed popped up from the bottom of the screen and I had some extra artifacts on the screen). However everything worked fine. That program does need some extra testing on different machines, it's far from perfect.

[surfasb]

Good think Vista and Win7 align your partitions in setup.

[ViciousXUSMC]

Originally Posted by surfasb

Good think Vista and Win7 align your partitions in setup.

Yeah really should be a disclaimer in bold red or something that you only need to do this for certain SSD's and only for XP not for Vista/Win 7