Unable to install SQL Server or LocalDB on Windows 11 due to different disk cluster size

Symptoms

You are trying to manually install SQL Server on Windows 11 or using an application that uses LocalDB that fails during the setup of LocalDB.

Possible errors are:

SQL Server Database Engine Services Instance Features 0x851A001A

There have been 256 misaligned log IOs which required falling back to synchronous IO.

Faulting application name: sqlservr.exe, version: 2019.150.2000.5, time stamp: 0x5d8a9215 
Faulting module name: ntdll.dll, version: 10.0.22000.120, time stamp: 0x50702a8c 
Exception code: 0xc0000005 
Fault offset: 0x00000000000357ae 

Cannot use file 'C:\Users\<user>\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Microsoft SQL Server Local DB\Instances\TestInstance\master.mdf' because it was originally formatted with sector size 4096 and is now on a volume with sector size 16384. Move the file to a volume with a sector size that is the same as or smaller than the original sector size.

Message            : Windows API call WaitForMultipleObjects returned error code: 575. Windows system error message is: {Application Error}
                     The application was unable to start correctly (0x%lx). Click OK to close the application.
                     Reported at line: 3621.
Source             : SQLLocalDB 11.0

Cause

SQL Server checks the unerlaying filesystem and checks the disk sector size. New storage systems on Windows 11 might expose a disk sector size greater than 4 KB. SQL Server currently only supports file systems with sector storage size between 512 bytes and 4 KB.

Resolution

First check if you are affected:

Start an elevated PowerShell:

fsutil fsinfo ntfsinfo c:

Look in the result for:

Bytes Per Physical Sector : 4096

A value greater than 4096 means you might be experience this issue.

An alternative PowerShell command:

Get-Disk | select PhysicalSectorSize, friendlyname

Please see the Microsoft documtention for possible resolution:

See Also