Could someone please clear this up for me? I've searched the forums and all the CX best practice docs I can find but still don't have a definitive answer. Searches refer to EMC White Paper 300-004-075 "Aligning GPT Basic and Dynamic disks" which I cannot seem to find.

MBR partitions must be aligned. Easy; no questions; been doing it for years.

What about GPT partitions? I've read conflicting things (even on this forum). Based on what I've found, a GPT partition does *not* need to be aligned. Here's my reasoning:

MBR uses a 63K area for storing the actual partition table. Since the CX uses a 64K element size as the default (which is what we use), an offset of 64K makes total sense.

GPT, from what I can tell, uses a 128MB (131,072K) area for storing the partition table. Since this is a multiple of 64K (by a factor of 2048), the GPT partition will automatically be aligned. Is this the correct conclusion or was my train of thought derailed somewhere?

In addition, if we *did* offset the GPT partition by 64K, this would have no impact as the partition table would now just be offset by a factor of 2049, or one more 64K chunk of disk.

I've been on vacation for two weeks so please help clear up my clouded mind!

Thanks!
Jeff