Intel X25-M 80GB Alignment Necessary?

[radeon962]

I know you should have your SSD aligned to a 1024 divisble sector, but I have tried everything short of reinstalling Win 7 to get it aligned.

I used Windows Image to copy my system from a WD Black 640GB to an Intel X25-M 80GB and it is aligned at 31k which I know is not correct.

I tried using diskpart to create a primary partition starting at 1024, which it did by verifying with diskpart. After I restored my Windows image though it goes back to 31k.

I did try using the Intel Data Migration software (which is made by Acronis) to clone the system first, which is very easy to use, but this also aligns the partition to 31k.

I ran AS SSD and it does show "31k - BAD", but the overall scores for Read are "199" and Write are "102" with an overall score of "402".

To put it into perspective, my other machine has an OCZ Agility 2 60GB SSD, which is correctly aligned, and scores a Read of "142", Write of "146" and overall score of "362".

So the Intel benchmarks better unaligned than the OCZ aligned and the Intel does feel overall snappier and more responsive.

Is running an SSD unaligned harmful to the disk at all? Or is it just that there is a slight loss of performance by running it unaligned?

I don't feel like reinstalling Windows at this time, but I don't want to risk damage to the Intel if not having it aligned would do that.

From what I have read here and other sites, the alignment would just provide for potentially a 5% or so increase in performance, but even with it unaligned it is still way faster than the WD Black 640GB and also faster than the OCZ Agility 2 60GB.

Thanks, Bill

 

[[LYL]Homer]

You're not going to see much difference and it won't harm your drive to keep it as it is now. Installing in AHCI mode vs. IDE is a big jump, but it looks like you have done that with a score of 402. I'd just wait for a convenient time to reinstall Win7 to correct the issue. Also, Paragon has an alignment tool that they were giving away at one point over the summer ($30 now) that I seem to end up using frequently to fix this issue.

 

[radeon962]

You're not going to see much difference and it won't harm your drive to keep it as it is now. Installing in AHCI mode vs. IDE is a big jump, but it looks like you have done that with a score of 402. I'd just wait for a convenient time to reinstall Win7 to correct the issue. Also, Paragon has an alignment tool that they were giving away at one point over the summer ($30 now) that I seem to end up using frequently to fix this issue.

I did take a look at the Paragon software and the "free" version ended July 30th. You can sign up for the whitepaper or something like that.

I am running in AHCI and have the 9.6.xxx. whatever Intel RST drivers. There was a slight increase in performance with the 9.6 version over the 8.xxxx something that was the default when I built the system a while back.

I figure I'll just run it the way it is until I upgrade some other hardware and then will install Windows from scratch then.

Thanks for the input.

Bill