@vegan
Please read before you hit reply.
The NTFS partition is aligned and so is the EXT4 partition.
The only partition that is not aligned is the unasked for Microsoft reserved partition.
Regarding the Microsoft reserved partition. It appears it’s only filling up the space between the first available sector (s = bytes) and the first MByte boundary, which otherwise would be empty/lost space and can now still be used for data store of formerly hidden sectors.
Explanation why parted aligns at MByte boundaries
Parted is just being overly conservative. The usual practice these days is to align partitions on 1MiB (2048-sector) boundaries because this works on Advanced Format disks, on certain type of RAID setups that require alignment, and on most SSDs. For an Advanced Format disk, so long as the alignment is on a multiple of 8, you’re fine, and 2048 is a multiple of 8. The lost disk space is puny.
[itectec.com]
Hidden sectors on GPT disks:
certain software components used hidden sectors of the disk for data storage purposes. For example, the Logical Disk Manager (LDM), on dynamic disks, stores metadata in a 1 MB area at the end of the disk which is not allocated to any partition.
[Wikipedia]
Because the NTFS partition is aligned, alignment should not be the problem.
Is there a knowledgeable person who can explain why WD states:
What is the reason that performance degrades when the Elements drive is not formatted with the WD Quick Formatter into one partition?
What lurks in the WD Elements drive in order to make such a statement?
Why does performance drop when you re-format and how can it be prevented?
