I know that it is recommended to align the disk partitions with the physical disk for Exchange storage. This article describes how. In reading this article, however, it says this is not necessary when using Windows Server 2008. I hope this to be true, because it will save me a lot of work in a big deployment I am faced with. My concern is, the 2nd link isn't a Microsoft link, and I cant find anything on Microsoft's site saying, that with 2008 you can ignore the diskpar operation. The closest thing i could find was this page, but it obviously makes no mention of Exchange. Can someone advise me on this matter? Can I just create partitions using disk management in windows 2008 for Exchange 2007 and leave the defaults?

Hi, In Windows Server 2008, partitions are automatically offset by 1 MB, which provides good alignment for the power-of-two stripe unit sizes that are typically found in hardware. If the stripe unit size is set to a size that is greater than 1MB, the alignment issue is much less of a problem because small requests rarely cross large stripe unit boundaries. Note that Windows Server 2008 defaults to a smaller power-of-two offset for small drives. You can refer to the below article: Performance Tuning Guidelines for Windows Server 2008(Page 30th- Block Alignment (DISKPART)) http://download.microsoft.com/download/9/c/5/9c5b2167-8017-4bae-9fde-d599bac8184a/Perf-tun-srv.docx Besides, you would get more information from Windows 2008 Forum about block alignment. Windows 2008 Server Forum http://forums.technet.microsoft.com/en/winserverfiles/threads/ More information share with you: Partition Design http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb738145(EXCHG.80).aspx Windows Server 2008 Technical Library http://technet2.microsoft.com/windowsserver2008/en/library/0264e204-130b-416c-bd13-be104e63c40c1033.mspx?mfr=true Hope it helps. Xiu

Thanks! I've checked with my storage team and they said to leave it as default, and that our EMC products also suggest this 1MB adjustment.