Question Western Digital PC SN730 NVMe SSD 4K Alignment?

[Super Spartan]

I just installed the WD SSD Dashboard and it shows that all 4 of my SSDs are not 4K Aligned, neither the 2 in RAID 0 nor the other 2 separate drives. There is no tool in that utility to actually do the 4K alignment. I tried MiniTool Partition Wizard and when I right click on the drives and choose align, it just tells me that they're already aligned but doesn't give an option for 4K alignment, just says aligned.

I Googled this and it seems that I can do 4K alignment using EaseUS Partition Master 14.5 but I don't wanna buy it just for aligning the partitions.

Is there another way to align them to 4K without having to format?

 

[Super Spartan]

Hmm, this is weird, I installed the demo of EaseUS Partition Master and it also says that my SSDs are all aligned when I chose 4K Alignment. I wonder why the Western Digital Dashboard is reporting that they're not.

 

[NewMaxx]

The benchmark AS SSD with tell you if a drive is 4K aligned. Can't get this version of the Dashboard working or I'd offer more information. However, separately it might mean 4Kn sector size.

 

[razel]

I would verify it myself. Type msinfo while on the windows start menu to bring up System Information. Dig into Components : Storage : Disks.

You'll see partition starting offset and you'll have many. Highlight it, Copy (ctrl-c) and paste into notepad and then copy the long number into calculator and divide by 4096 for each until you find the one that isn't aligned.

 

[Super Spartan]

The benchmark AS SSD with tell you if a drive is 4K aligned. Can't get this version of the Dashboard working or I'd offer more information. However, separately it might mean 4Kn sector size.

 

[Igo69]

What does 4K alignment do?

 

[NewMaxx]

4KB alignment looks good (green).

 

[Super Spartan]

4KB alignment looks good (green).

Thanks for the confirmation. So I guess the WD tool is just reporting it wrong

 

[NewMaxx]

Thanks for the confirmation. So I guess the WD tool is just reporting it wrong

Can't get the DB to load on my system so I can't check for sure, it's possible it means 4Kn vs 512e for sector size. It's possible to format the SN730 in 4Kn but it comes 512e by default I believe. It's not relevant either way really, I think it's just checking alignment incorrectly.

 

[razel]

What does 4K alignment do?

For modern SSDs, it makes writes efficient and lessens wear. Back in the day it was common for non 4k alignment to affect all performance results. Do a search on Anandtech for his articles about write amplification and 4k alignment.

 

[NewMaxx]

What does 4K alignment do?

How to Align Partition | MiniTool Partition Wizard Tutorial - MiniTool Partition Wizard

It is very necessary to align partition on SSD, and here detailed steps to align a partition with MiniTool Partition Wizard are shown clearly.

www.partitionwizard.com

 

[Igo69]

Strange that i never heard of this alignment before is this something recent?
Will it damage files if i use 4K alignment ?

 

[Super Spartan]

Will it damage files if i use 4K alignment ?

No, offcourse not. It is the recommended value for SSDs