Is there a utility to re-align NTFS file systems that are mis-aligned?

[Doug Katz]

I got wind of a Utility that will fix, in place, file systems that are misaligned. I am particularly concerned about VMWare guest systems that are not aligned on install. I want to align the C: drive. Other drives may be set up correctly in the first place.

I looked around at things like Knoppix and Partition Magic, but they didn't have anything listed of this nature. This would be a very cool feature for Knoppix.

Anyone know of this utility?

[Uwe Zessin]

I've heard about something in the VMware forums, but didn't save a link, sorry.

Technically speaking, you cannot align the filesystem (NTFS) itself. The misalignment is at the PARTITION level. It is fixed by moving the offset of the first partition (typically 63 blocks) to a higher number (64, 128, 2048).

In a physical world, you cannot easily fix this by moving the partition blocks, because the last blocks of the filesystem would point past the end of the physical disk drive. You have to shrink the filesystem a bit as part of the realignment. Or save all data, create a new partition with the desired alignment and then create a new filesystem (which is slightly smaller) and restore all data.