Cluster Size at Restore
Years ago I stopped to use True Image since it always changed the cluster size at restore.
Since I use some partitions for things like video editing the default cluster size of NTFS is to small for optimal disk performance. So I set it higher to speed up the disk and to reduce defragmentation.
But when I restored such a partition with True Image it always changed the cluster size back to the NTFS default value. So Acronis True Image got pretty useless for me.
My question. Years have passed. Did anything change with the new versions of True Image? Can it restore now to the set cluster size of a partition and not to the NTFS default values?
The idea to restore to the NTFS default values and to change it afterwards with other software is a bid time consuming...
As far as I know, TI has always worked that way.
Is this an assumption or do you know it for sure?
I know for sure that it did not work at least until True Image 8 (True Image never created a TRUE IMAGE but only a better backup). Then I gave up on it when the technical support answered me that they might bring this perhaps some when in the future.
I just would like to know if the future is here already. But if I look at the latest True Image versions I do not see a hint in this direction in the manual. But perhaps I overlooked this.
John:
I know for sure that TI versions 9 and 10 behave that way when doing imaging (as opposed to file backup). I've played with different cluster sizes on the disk and then backed up the partition with TI. When restored, the partition is always restored to the same format and cluster size as the source partition.
My assumption is that later versions also behave the same way, but it's probably a very good assumption based on the way that the software operates. Unlike backup software that simply copies at the file level, a TI image operates at the sector level on the disk. It simply replaces sectors on the disk with those in the backup image. If the backup image was formatted with 64k clusters then no matter how the destination partition is formatted, or even if the destination is unformatted, unallocated space, the restored partition will have the same format and cluster size as the partition that it was imaged from.
I had just presumed that TI always worked that way; that's the fundamental nature of image-based restoration schemes. I am quite surprised to hear that it did not work that way prior to version 8. I came aboard back in the version 9 days.
I just formatted a 20G partition with 64K clusters, copied 1.2GB of files to it and made an image with TI2009 under Windows.
Restored image in Windows - cluster size on HD still 64K.
Restored image using TI2009 Linux CD - cluster size still 64K.
Sorry but no leap to TI2010 yet.
Perhaps they really changed this because many people complained about it. In the next weeks I will build a new system and will make a new try with a later version. I will make an update then of this topic with my new experience. But before it was not like this - even confirmed by an email of the Acronis support team as mentioned before. Norton Ghost could do this or a complete partition copy. But let's see.