FAQ: How to view partition starting alignment offsets in bytes

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One question that comes up a fair bit is how to view partition starting alignment offsets by the number of bytes. The following WMIC command can be used to view the starting offsets in bytes for disks.

Note: Starting with Windows Vista, and Windows Server 2008, disks should automatically be aligned to 1K when creating new partitions. Please note that on systems that have disks which were created using an older version of Windows, that pre-existing partitions are not able to be re-aligned as part of the Windows upgrade process.

wmic partition get Index, Name, StartingOffset

In the example below, Disk 0 is basic, and Disk 1 is dynamic.

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For more information on disk alignment issues, please see the following KB article:

Disk performance may be slower than expected when you use multiple disks in Windows Server 2003, in Windows XP, and in Windows 2000

-Bruce