NetApp support has suggested us aligning partitions to improve performance, in short: starting sector must be divisible by 8. How can I move the start point in a misaligned partition -in production, with ext3- under Linux? A screenshot with a misaligned (start=63s) and aligned (start=64s) partition is available at: http://filesocial.com/lkwvvn2 (If anyone is interested in this topic, NetApp has a good document explaining performance issues in misaligned partitions, search for "tr-3747": Best Practices for File System Alignment in Virtual Environments.) I have tried using parted "resize + move" commands, but when moving start point a get this error: (parted) resize Partition number? 1 Start? [64s]? End? [419425019s]? 419425018 (parted) move Partition number? 1 Start? 65 End? [419425019s]? 419425019 Error: Can't move a partition onto itself. Try using resize, perhaps? Using fdisk 'b' command in expert mode ('move beginning of data in a partition') works, but it doesn't move the file system.. thanks!!