Following shakedown training and post-shakedown repairs and alterations, Alden, subsequently her classification changed from "Destroyer No 211" to DD-211 during the fleet-wide assignment of alphanumeric hull numbers on 17 July 1920, sailed on 5 December 1919 for duty in European waters, proceeding to Constantinople, and then to Samsun, Turkey.

Proceeding to Constantinople to participate in relief efforts for refugees from the Russian Civil War, she resumed her Adriatic operations soon afterwards, visiting Kotor and Split before she returned to Venice on 12–13 December 1920.

Then, following a stint of target and torpedo practice in the waters of Lingayen Gulf from 13 April to 25 May 1922, the destroyer enjoyed a five-day respite at Manila before she sailed for Shanghai, China, on 3 June and a drydocking in that port.

Winding up her deployment in the Asiatic Fleet that summer, Alden sailed for the United States, and ultimately reached San Francisco, California on 2 October.

Over the next six years, Alden, assigned initially to DesDiv 13, steamed north to China in the spring, spent the summer operating out of Chefoo, and returned to the Philippines in the fall for further exercises and upkeep at Cavite over the winter.

Since the Sino-Japanese hostilities seemed confined at the outset to North China, Admiral Harry E. Yarnell, Commander in Chief, Asiatic Fleet (CINCAF), had few reservations about carrying out a planned goodwill cruise to Vladivostok, USSR.

Alden accompanied Paul Jones, Whipple and Barker to sea from their base at Chefoo, and rendezvoused with Augusta at the end of the afternoon watch on 25 July.

Yarnell's ships reached Vladivostok on the morning of the 28th, and remained there until the afternoon of 1 August, in this first visit to a Russian port since the establishment of diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union in 1933.

After hostilities broke out at Shanghai in mid-August, the ships of the Asiatic Fleet carried out a curtailed training schedule for the remainder of the summer and into the fall, chiefly standing by to assist Americans who might be affected.

Early on the morning of 11 December 1937, Dollar Steamship Lines' ocean liner SS President Hoover ran aground in a typhoon on Kasho-to, east of Formosa.

A Grumman J2F Duck amphibious aircraft from the Asiatic Fleet's utility unit brought Haight out to Alden, rendezvoused with the ship and landed nearby.

Due to the continued "tense and unpredictable" situation in the Far East at that time, Admiral Hart desired to "obtain additional security from surprise attack" and reduce the possibility of the Japanese cutting off "certain of his surface forces" from British and Dutch bases in the event of war.

To that end, on 24 November 1941, CINCAF ordered Task Force 5, formed around Marblehead, two destroyer divisions (57 and 58, the former including Alden) and Black Hawk, to the ports of Balikpapan and Tarakan Island, Borneo.

Phillips sought the loan of destroyers from the Asiatic Fleet to help screen his capital ships, but Hart, opining that the British already possessed adequate resources in that department, demurred.

Intelligence information disclosing the movement of a Japanese convoy in the Gulf of Siam, however, changed Hart's mind, and as Admiral Phillips resolved to return to Singapore, CINCAF decided to transfer one division of destroyers.

She and her sister ships were still preparing for sea as Japanese high-level and torpedo bombers, flying from bases in Indochina, overwhelmed Prince of Wales and Repulse off Kuantan, Malaya, that afternoon and sank them both.

Underway at 1509, Alden and her sister ships soon cleared Singapore, and stood toward the scene of the action in response to Admiral Phillips' desperate signal, sent early in the battle, for destroyer assistance.

Alden and her division mates subsequently entered the waters in which the battle had taken place earlier that day, looking for survivors, but only sighted pieces of wreckage, eventually winding up the search effort during the mid-watch.

En route back to Singapore, Alden noted a "probable submarine attack," at 0630 on 11 December, and Edsall left the formation to investigate the source of "torpedo wakes" but found nothing.

Underway on the 20th for Australian waters, Alden sailed for Port Darwin in the screen of Houston, breaking up the routine of the voyage by sending boarding parties to investigate and establish the friendly character of various small craft and ships sighted en route.

[2] "Mindful of leaving (the) convoy unprotected" if she continued to seek out the submarine, Alden returned to her screening station and arrived at Port Darwin without further incident.

Underway at 1641, leaving a third of her crew behind to break out stores on board Black Hawk, Alden rushed to the scene, finding Deloraine already dropping depth charges.

Edsall and the Australian ships, accompanied by a PBY Catalina, returned to the scene but were unable to locate the slick, last seen by Alden, because of a heavy rain squall in the vicinity.

A short time later, it was determined that the victim of the earlier attack by Edsall and Deloraine was I-124, a large Japanese mine-laying submarine had laid 27 mines near Darwin that had already sunk three Allied merchantmen.

Getting underway late the following day, Alden joined Paul Jones and Ban Hong Liong on the morning of 12 February, and convoyed the Briton to the port of Koepang, Timor.

All within earshot laughed, and the comment broke the tension as the American destroyers, the oldest ships in the ABDA line, steered a course toward the Japanese and launched torpedoes from their starboard tubes at 1822.

Emerging from the coastal waters to clear a reef, the Americans apparently came into the enemy's sight soon afterwards, since gunfire erupted from the Japanese ships within 15 minutes' time.

Reporting to Commander, Australia-New Zealand area, on 28 March, Alden operated in the waters of the Southwest Pacific until sailing for Pearl Harbor, reaching her destination on 7 June en route to the United States West Coast.

The destroyer spent the next two months shuttling convoys between Trinidad and Guantanamo Bay, before she proceeded north to the New York Navy Yard, which she entered on 28 June for repairs and alterations.

Her name was struck from the Naval Vessel Register on 13 August, and the ship was sold to the Boston Metals Salvage Company, of Baltimore, Maryland, on 30 November 1945, to be broken up for scrap.