Disk alignment has been well discussed on the web and the methods to check this always seem to use wmic or DISKPART. I've always loathed wmi so here's a few lines of Powershell that achieves the same thing;

$sqlserver = "sqlinstance";
# Get disk partitions
$partitions = Get-WmiObject -ComputerName $sqlserver -Class Win32_DiskPartition;
$partitions | Select-Object -Property DeviceId, Name, Description, BootPartition, PrimaryPartition, Index, Size, BlockSize, StartingOffset | Format-Table -AutoSize;

This will display something looking like below;

DeviceId              Name                  Description             BootPartition PrimaryPartition Index          Size BlockSize StartingOffset
--------              ----                  -----------             ------------- ---------------- -----          ---- --------- --------------
Disk #2, Partition #0 Disk #2, Partition #0 Installable File System False True 0 1099523162112 512 1048576 Disk #3, Partition #0 Disk #3, Partition #0 Installable File System False True 0 536878252032 512 1048576 Disk #4, Partition #0 Disk #4, Partition #0 Installable File System False True 0 1082130432 512 65536 Disk #5, Partition #0 Disk #5, Partition #0 Installable File System False True 0 1082130432 512 65536 Disk #1, Partition #0 Disk #1, Partition #0 Installable File System False True 0 107376279552 512 1048576 Disk #0, Partition #0 Disk #0, Partition #0 Installable File System True True 0 104857600 512 1048576 Disk #0, Partition #1 Disk #0, Partition #1 Installable File System False True 1 81684070400 512 105906176 Disk #0, Partition #2 Disk #0, Partition #2 Installable File System False True 2 104857600000 512 81789976576 Disk #0, Partition #3 Disk #0, Partition #3 Installable File System False True 3 104857600000 512 186647576576

A [64K cluster size](http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd758814(v=sql.100).aspx) is good for SQL Server. But what about the offset? The simple calculation below can be used to check this...

**StartingOffset / BlockSize / 128** (a 64K cluster has 128 sectors assuming a 512 block size).

If this calculation spits out a number with any decimal places then you have some disk aligning to do.

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