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Drift aligning definitely works, but I find it a bit time consuming and not intuitive if your initial polar alignment is extremely far out.
Software-based approaches use star pairs - you choose a pair of stars, slew to the first one, centre it, the software slews to where it thinks the second one should be, you correct any errors, and the software then "de-centres" the star by the amount that you have to adjust the polar alignment by. It's very, very quick even if your initial polar alignment is off by many degrees.
I personally use AlignMaster because it's what I started on, but popular alternatives include PolarAlignMax (based on plate solving) and the PA routine built into the latest firmware revisions of the SynScan handset.
For example, I can plonk my EQ6 down on the tripod and roughly eyeball south (phone compass during the day, or with the Southern Cross at night). The first star pair iteration might tell me that I'm off by 8 degrees in az, and 3 degrees in alt. I do the correction and repeat, and then I'm off by 30 arc min in az and alt. On the third iteration, I'm down to < 1 arc min PA error, which is fine for my imaging.
The most important thing with any technique, however, is to make sure that your tripod is horizontally level *and* whatever it's standing on is firm enough that it doesn't move while slewing. Tripod on soft grass/soil is a no no, in my experience. If the mount isn't level / moves, then you'll spend hours in frustration because every correction in one axis will mess up the other axis.
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