WD Align Utility

WD Align Utility is a comprehensive 4k alignment tool. The WD Align Utility can help users automatically complete the 4k alignment formatted by the hard disk partition tool. The software is simple to operate and suitable for all users. Friends in need come and download it to experience it!

Partition alignment

Not all sectors of a hard disk are used to store data, and some sectors are used for other things. In the traditional sector division mechanism, a synchronization/delimitation (Sync/DAM) area and an ECC error checking area need to be separated between every 512 bytes of data. In the "Advanced Format" mode, every 4K is a sector, which is equivalent to combining the previous 8 sectors into one. Only one synchronization/separation area and a slightly larger capacity ECC check area are needed. Using advanced format technology, each 4K data recording sector only requires one Sync/DAM and ECC area, while the traditional one requires 8. The 7 saved sectors originally used for Sync/DAM and ECC can be used to store more data. For users who install Windows XP or other older versions of Windows operating systems, the hard disk partitions formatted through the system's own or other hard disk partitioning tools are often not 4K aligned. At this time, there may be a phenomenon where the lower version system and software cannot fully take advantage of the new technology. Therefore, in order to make the operating system and software better match the performance of the new 4K/sector hard disk, advanced formatting is required. Comparative testing found that when the Windows system partition is not aligned with 4K sectors of the hard disk, the hard disk copy speed may be more than ten percent slower than the optimized one (the worst value).