# Aligned Partitions



## Niatross (Mar 12, 2014)

I want to install FreeBSD on a flash drive.

I understand that I need to align partitions if I were to install FreeBSD onto a 4K sector hard drive or Solid State Drive (SSD).

My question is:

Does a flash drive require the user to align partitions in order to get optimum performance too?


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## wblock@ (Mar 12, 2014)

In general, yes.  USB flash drives may be so slow to write that it won't matter.  On SSDs, align at least to 4K.  Some say 8K, some align to 1M.  If you start the first filesystem partition at 1M and make all filesystem partitions a multiple of 1M or 1G in size, the alignment works out by itself.


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## Niatross (Mar 12, 2014)

Do you use 4k for flash drives?

BTW: Your right, USB flash drives are slow for things like this. LOL!


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## wblock@ (Mar 12, 2014)

I have not benchmarked USB flash drives for alignment, no.


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