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Partition Alignment

Unfortunately these days for optimal performance care must be taken that partitions are properly aligned to avoid excessive read-modify-write cycles. For details please refer to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partition_alignment, esp. "4 KB sector alignment" and "SSD page partition alignment".

Additional some partition tables require alignment, e.g. DASD partition tables need alignment to tracks (usually 12 sectors).

Goals:

  • Only create aligned partitions.

  • Avoid gaps between partitions.

General Workflow:

  • Call get_unused_partition_slots().

    Start of regions is aligned, end is not aligned.

  • Choose a region.

  • Optionally set the start and/or size of the region.

  • Call align().

    Per default this will align the start and end of the region. The start is rounded up and the end is rounded down. This way it is assured that the aligned region is still within the partition slot.

    As a consequence the size of the region can be reduced by upto approximately two times the grain. As a further consequence the resulting region may not exist/be empty.

  • Pass aligned region to create_partition().

Use Cases:

  • Create partition:

    Just use general workflow.

  • Create small (just a few grains) partition:

    Call align() with align_type = AlignType::REQUIRED.

  • Create partition using rest of slot:

    Call align() with align_type = AlignType::REQUIRED.

Following these workflows ensures that new partitions are aligned and that there are no gaps unless technical inevitable. Usually gaps will appear before the first partition and before logical partitions.

On the other hand by using the align() function with align_type = AlignType::REQUIRED still unoptional unaligned partitions can be created. Gaps can also be created when exact sizes are preferred over no gaps.

It should be obviously that "exact sizes" are only possible within the possibility of the hardware, usually multiples of 512 B or 4 KiB, and requirements of the partition table.