Partition alignment

Partition alignment is the proper alignment of partitions to the boundaries available in a data storage device.

How to use

fdisk, gdisk and parted handle alignment automatically. See parted#Check alignment if you want to verify your alignment after partitioning.

For certain drives Advanced Format might be able to provide a better-performing alignment.

Examples include the following:

4KB sector alignment with hard disk drives supporting Advanced Format (AF)
Track partition alignment, partitions starting on track boundaries on hard disk drives
Cylinder partition alignment, partitions starting on logical or physical cylinder boundaries on hard disk drives
SSD page partition alignment, partitions starting on NVM page boundaries (with pages typically 4 to 16KB in size) on SSDs and other flash-based memory devices
SSD block partition alignment, partitions starting on NVM block boundaries (typically blocks of 128 to 512 pages) on SSDs and other flash-based memory devices
1MB partition alignment, partitions starting on 1MB boundaries
RAID stripe alignment, partition alignment based on stripe boundaries