Re-Align System Partition without Data Loss using GParted: Gnome Partition Editor (GParted LiveCD) http://gparted.sourceforge.net/ -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- http://www.forum.crucial.com/t5/Solid-State-Drives-SSD/Re-alignment-without-data-loss/m-p/4829 NOTE: Copied from the following URL, copy this article ALSO: Aligning Windows Partitions Without Losing Data - From the Recliner: http://www.tuxyturvy.com/blog/index.php?/archives/59-Aligning-Windows-Partitions-Without-Losing-Data.html -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Taken From: http://forums.anandtech.com/archive/index.php/t-2039146.html Follow instruction: 01. Make sure the disk is backup/cloned 02. Boot the system with the Gparted live CD. 03. Select the parition you are wanting to resize and choose (Move/Resize) 04. Remove Round to Cylinders 05. Free 10mb from the left side 06. Once the move completes, exit Gparted, not the entire live CD, just the Gparted application 07. Start the terminal window on the live CD 08. In the command window type 'parted /dev/sda' to start the command line parted editor 09. Create a new partition at the start of the disk to fill in the space up to the section where you want to align your parition. For example, if you want your system partition to start at sector 128, create a very small partition that takes up space from sectors 63-127. The command would be something like this: mkpart primary 63s 127s This tells parted to create a new primary partition from sector 63 to sector 127. That means the very next sector available is 128, a stripe aligned partition. You may want a different start sector based on your array (some use 64K, some 128K, some bigger) but I've found the 128K alignment to work well with both 64K (Equallogic) and 128K (EMC Clariiion) stripe sizes. 10. Exit parted and restart the Gparted GUI by clicking the Gparted icon. 11. Use the Move/Resize option to resize the NTFS partition to fill the entire remaining space. And uncheck round to cylinders. 12. Exit gparted, run parted again, remove the small partition you created earlier. Command: Help, Print, RM # and reboot. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------------------------------------------