HGST Align Tool 2.0.154

A less known disk maintenance task - but maybe as equally important as disk formatting - is partition alignment, especially when you're using Advanced Format drives in legacy environments. Realigning partitions can help avoid performance degradation scenarios, especially those caused by cluster straddling. Being a rather obscure maintenance task, partition alignment is also quite difficult, if not plain impossible, to perform manually without the right tools. Happily, there are a few dedicated tools that help you perform this task in a much simpler and easier manner. HGST Align Tool is one of these tools. It is a neat, simple, and free disk maintenance utility that checks your partitions for alignment issues and lets you fix them if any such issues are found.

HGST Align Tool is very easy to use, and it has a self-explanatory wizard-like interface that guides you step by step through the whole process of partition alignment checking and fixing. This tool will retain all preexisting data while performing the alignment operations, even if this means that it will move the partition boundaries and file locations. Still, making sure that you have backups at hand is more than recommended. The duration of the alignment task depends on the health of the drive and several other factors.

In conclusion, for any partition alignment needs, this handy tool is of great help. It is also free and it doesn't require any special experience or knowledge about disk maintenance operations.