On Wed, 19 Oct 2016 10:24:43 +0100, John Rumm
wrote:

snip good stuff for brevity

Yes, I understand that's what you are saying but can you offer any way
of substantiating it? Or more accurately, is there any way you could
help me substantiate it for myself on the SSD / System (dual booting
W10 and Mint 18) here?

There is a simple empirical solution... if you have a system with non
aligned partitions (and that would only be likely if you have partitions
originally created by an old OS (pre Vista kind of time frame)),

(or if you had cloned the drive from a conventional one as I have with
the laptop in question...?)

then
benchmark the disk. Then run one of the partition alignment tools and
benchmark again.

Yes, that's what I suggested I could do but wasn't aware of ant
specific tools to do it with. eg, I'm aware of generic PC benchmarking
utilities but not knowing all the answers I would like to know if
there was a recommended utility for highlighting such things. I ask
because I am also aware of Utilities that can be confused and *not*
report the true facts.

snip

Maybe if no definitive / scientific answer is easily obtainable, maybe
a direct / specific speed test (focused on testing for such things)
could be applied (by me) pre and post any block alignment and then at
least I would know if it was any more than just a geeky myth etc
('now', if it ever was anything else etc). ;-)

Yup, sounds like it might be worth doing. Since a good prerequisite of
any exercise like that will be a full backup, the time will not be
totally wasted ;-)

A raw 'iron image' is taken daily on my WHS 2011 server. ;-)

Maybe I need a gold plated SATA 'Digital' cable to be able to test it
fully. weg

See if that nice Mr Andrews has anything to offer.

Did he work for Richer Sounds or such like then? ;-)

Cheers, T i m