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Band-in-a-Box for Windows
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Joined: Feb 2010
Posts: 49
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OP
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The problem, in short, is that misaligned disk partitions cause the disk heads to have to work harder resulting in a significant loss of performance. Needless to say, we all want our DAWs to run as efficiently as possible.
Not sure how serious that 'problem' is. Do you have references and links to benchmarks?
A couple years ago I came accross the info about partition alignment when I was trying to tweak the performance on a Dell laptop to be a portable DAW to supplement my desktop system. There are a bunch of references and benches on the web (hunt the boards). The short answer is, in my personal experience, I did a lot of benchmarks comparing misaligned and aligned starting partition offsets and found read / write speed improved on disk partitions aligned to 1024 kilobytes. I'll look for the benches, but my recollection is the aligned partitions were ~6% to 15% faster read / writes.
My Dell lappy - which was an expensive top of the line machine when new - is 6 year old "dinosaur" now. IDE controller maxing out at UDMA 5, 5400RPM IDE drive. Aligned vs misaligned comparison on the IDE drive was around ~6-8% faster read / writes.
Installed a DVD/CD drive bay adapter in order to use a second SATA HDD to make it dual drive. And dual boot - one XP OS for DAW, the other for general use. The WD Caviar Black is 7200 RPM and Read / write speed comparison aligned vs misaligned was greater - ~12% with aligned partitions on the faster WD Black.
I have another adapter in the main HDD caddy for an Intel x-18M SSD and it blows the doors off the platter drive. Especially the seek times. I didn't mess around doing extensive aligned vs misaligned benches with the Intel SSD, but the initial install was misaligned (using Acronis - see note below) so I realigned the partition starting offset and once aligned it was ~15% faster read / write speed.
Connecting an external drive using an eSATA adapter PCMCIA card I get UMDA 7 speeds. The difference was greater aligned vs misaligned. My recollection on this comparison is a little fuzzy but it was more.
Seems that the faster the drive / controllers / connection is the more partition alignment makes a difference.
Quote:
Just checked the offset of my system disks here on a Vista system -> similar to your complained figures ... you said Microsoft corrected the problem with Vista an Win7 (?).
Depends on where and with what software the partitions were created. Vista / Win7 defaults to 1024k partition starting offset. Have you cloned the drive? Some cloning software create a 31.5k partition offset. *Note below* Was Vista pre-installed on your machine? Chances are the manufacturer used earlier os system to create the disk partition for installation. We have an HP lappy that came with Vista pre-installed that was misaligned to 31.5k (which reads 32256 bytes) in "system info"). Backed it up, realigned the partition >>using Vista<< and it defaulted the starting partition offset to 1024k, re-imaged the backup onto the drive. Faster, though I didn't save any bench comparisons on the HP machine.
(*note* Acronis, Partition Wizard which I have personally used destroyed the aligned partition created with windows or diskpart and installed the old 31.5k default (32256 bytes) though I recall seeing recently that a newer version or tool from Acronis correctly aligns the offset. Drive Image XML will use the aligned partitions made in windows or diskpart without changing the offset)
See for yourself - take a spare drive and partition it with Vista or Windows 7 and it will default to 1024k partition starting offset (which will read 1048576 bytes in "system information").
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Band-in-a-Box for Windows
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Joined: Feb 2010
Posts: 49
Enthusiast
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OP
Enthusiast
Joined: Feb 2010
Posts: 49 |
Quote:
Do a search for HDClone 3.9 freeware from Miray Software. It will allow you to clone a hard drive while preserving, even adjusting to correct if necessary, the 4K boundary.
Thanks for the recommendation. Took a quick peek and it looks good. 
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Band-in-a-Box for Windows
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Joined: Feb 2010
Posts: 49
Enthusiast
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OP
Enthusiast
Joined: Feb 2010
Posts: 49 |
Quote:
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Lawrence,
Why don't you just copy everything off the drive to another drive, repartition the drive, and then move everything back?
Gary
Hi Gary. Thought of that. Can that be done - no copy protection? Besides that, transferring the data back and forth would void the warranty if the drive failed in the future, wouldn't it?
Lawrence
Many thanks to PGMusic support - this reply just received:
"please feel free to copy the contents to another drive, re-partition, and copy back. This will not reflect negatively on your license (we note that you mentioned on the forum that you were worried about that).
Best regards,
Callie Cotterell
Marketing Representative
PG Music Inc."
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Band-in-a-Box for Windows
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Joined: Feb 2010
Posts: 49
Enthusiast
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OP
Enthusiast
Joined: Feb 2010
Posts: 49 |
Quote:
Hi Lawrence,
Here's a web page that I've found about partition misalignment. It explains it very well.
http://www.storagereview.com/impact_misalignment
If I am interpreting this and your information correctly, the problem is related to hard drives that operate beyond a physical sector size of 512 bytes (say 4K sectors). This interpretation is also supported by Microsoft at
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/929491
From what I can find, the RAID disk to which the MS article refers also has 4K sectors.
I notice, from using System Information, that my USB drive from PG Music has a physical sector size is 512 bytes. As previously mentioned, 32,256/512 = 63. Further investigation reveals that these 63 sectors (with a physical sector size of 512 bytes) are perfectly normal; my USB drive is operating exactly the way that Windows was designed to operate and on a sector size that is a perfect fit for this operating system. If, however, my USB drive had a different sector size (e.g. 4K), then (from what I read) I would have potential alignment issues. At the moment, though, it seems that all is well for me.
Regards,
Noel
Thanks for the info Noel. I'm not an expert like you. I do the best I can to understand very technical details that are outside of my realm of expertise. Hand me a guitar!:) I can report unequivocably that benched read / write speeds improved on my machines after aligning the drive partition starting offsets.
As it relates to Biab, the result (in my experience) is faster generation, lower latency, especially with real time midi accompaniment and lower cpu useage.
Thanks again
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Band-in-a-Box for Windows
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Joined: May 2000
Posts: 15,944
PG Music Staff
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PG Music Staff
Joined: May 2000
Posts: 15,944 |
[Noel] (emphasis added) : I notice, from using System Information, that my USB drive from PG Music has a physical sector size is 512 bytes. As previously mentioned, 32,256/512 = 63. Further investigation reveals that these 63 sectors (with a physical sector size of 512 bytes) are *** perfectly normal *** ; my USB drive is operating exactly the way that Windows was designed to operate and on a sector size that is a *** perfect fit for this operating system.***
=============================
Thanks for the info Noel. At PG Music, we use Toshiba drives (not Western Digital), and from my understanding, and your information posted above, things are normal with the sector sizes, and this a non-issue.
Have Fun!
Peter Gannon
PG Music Inc.
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