disk alignment

Not sure if this is hardware related or software related. So, I'll ask here.

Anyone have any expertise on disk aligning? What I mean by this is before one installs an OS on a drive, one should align the disk. This supposedly improves over all performance of the drive. Mainly this is used for SSD drives, but one could use this for Virtual machines.

I found one site that steps through this using a ubuntu live cd to setup the alignment, which worked, but xp refused to install.

Any thoughts?

 

For instance for SQL it is recommended to align the disks from this article:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd758814(SQL.100).aspx

I was just curious if anyone has done this on their primary drive, and whether or not it is beneficial. Well, better performance in a VDI environment.

 

So, no one has done this? If not, I'll post my results here, when I can.

 

Well, I got my answer through research.

For windows 7 at least:

Boot to the windows 7 installation CD

Once the first installation screen appears do the following:

Hit Shift + F10
(a command prompt appears)
Diskpart (Press Enter)
Select disk 0 (Press Enter)
Create partition primary (Press Enter)
Select partition 1 (Press Enter)
Active (Press Enter)
Format fs=ntfs quick (Press Enter)
Exit (Press Enter)
Exit (Press Enter)
Now continue normal OS install

Also, I've tested this and it works.