Paragon Alignment Tool 4.0 Professional ($30)

Paragon Software Group (PSG) announced the release of Paragon Alignment Tool (PAT) 4.0, a software utility designed to automatically determine if a drive’s partitions are misaligned, then properly realign all partitions, including boot partitions and any data they contain.

In addition to solving misalignment issues on PCs, PAT 4.0 eases alignment problems within virtual machines. The new edition comes with a 20% faster alignment engine, Windows 8 support, new bootable WinPE-based version and efficient tools to recover volumes that were accidentally lost during the alignment.
 
Partition misalignment results in slow write times and inefficient disk operations, also affecting alignment in virtual machines. With a continuously increasing number of SSDs and large HDDs used with laptops, workstations and servers, PAT 4.0 becomes the must-have tool for any PC user or IT professional. It improves PC performance and SSD drive endurance.
 
New Features in PAT 4.0:

• Up to 20% faster alignment engine than earlier versions;
• Windows 8 support;
• Bootable WinPE version makes it possible to create a bootable WinPE environment and add drivers for any specific hardware;
• Virtual partition alignment;
• New tools to help recover partitions: recover deleted volumes with the ‘undelete’ wizard after an unexpected alignment operation interruption caused, for example, by a sudden power shortage.

PAT 4.0 can be downloaded as standalone software for $29.95 USD (€19.95).It is also included in Partition Manager, and is available as an add-on feature for Virtualization Manager.