alignment on a SSD

alignment to what?

Align the blocks to the start of the partition on a complete track in loose terms rather than just the first available place on the disk.

Microsoft says that not doing it can result in a 50% drop in performance on Read-Write/Modify cycles.

SSD owners need to know the answer to this.  SSD's that don't have proper partition alignment suffer performance penalties.    It is a known issue the TI2009 did not preserve the alignment.

Does 2010 do it properly?

is for SSD, with Vista and Seven, the alignment is a 1024k

IT 2009 does not preserve the alignment, is what TI 2010 preserve the alignment?

thank you ;)

PS: sorry for my english

I have recovered some images from Vista and Windows Seven. The alignment was 1024 before and after the recovery. But I don't know if that happens because TI 2010 preserves the alignment or just because 1024 is now the default value of TI. If anyone wants to check his alignment, under vista/seven you can do this with the integrated tool "diskpart"  (-> list disk -> select disk -> list partition).

I've run several tests in a VM using TI 2010 (build 5,055) to check how the offset is handled. The results are not what I expected, but they're better than previous versions.

My test drive had two partitions created with Vista. The first partition was 20GB and started at offset 2048 (1MB). All tests were done using the Full Mode (Linux-based) version of TI.

• Restoring an Entire Disk Image keeps the offset/alignment. This is consistent with previous versions.
• Restoring a partition back into its existing space kept the offset/alignment. For example: After restoring the first partition, the starting offset was still 2048.
• When I tried to resize the first partition as part of the restore process, TI would reset the "space before" value to 0. If left at 0, the 63 sector offset/alignment is used for the restored partition.
• Restoring the first partition to a unallocated drive also reverted to the 63 sector offset/alignment.
• In several tests, I could enter 1MB into the "space before" box. However, this resulted in the restored partition having 2MB before (starting sector 4,096) instead of 1MB (starting sector 2048). I think this alignment should still be okay, but I don't understand why TI is changing the entered offset.
• In some tests, TI would not let me enter 1MB into the box. It would only allow fractional values: 0.461, 0.954, 1.446, etc. These do not align correctly.

If restoring to another drive, it may be best to create the partition as desired and then restore into it or restore the Entire Disk Image and then use Disk Management to resize it. For example: I cleared the drive (all unallocated space) and created a new 40GB partition using Vista. I then restored the 20GB partition into the 40GB partition using the default values. The restored partition still had the 2048 offset.

About 50% of the time that I tried to resize the partition during the restore, the summary screen wouldn't show that it was going to happen. In those cases, going back and changing the size a little would let TI actually do the resize.

In the tests that resulted in the same partition offset value, TI did not keep the same Begin/End cylinder/head/sect values as the original.

My understanding is that Norton Ghost 15 supports all features of ssd. I cannot even get my true image loaded on the ssd without a mbr 1 error. Technical support was not helpful and a best a joke. I've been an Acronis customer for many years and am extremely disapointed. I have many image file which are no longer of any use. I have a computer that's dead and lost data. I cannot even get the MBR 1 error resolved.

Fred,
I do not have Win7 or an SSD. Have you considered downloading the iso file from your registration. After download, burn the iso to CD and then attempt to backup or restore prior versions. This may be a temporary option. Be aware of possible alignment conflicts when using the old backups--as per MudCrab's test data posted in #6 above.

I have an Iso image and that's the way I usually restore a drive. I just bought 2 ssd's and was able to format and install an image, but all I get is a MBR 1 error. Someone else corrected this but I don't know how they did it. They want $59 for Norton and I'm not sure ssd's are worth all that trouble. I just wish I knew how to fix the MBR problem

Sorry, but I get really confused with all this alligment and cylinders, etc.

If I have a conentional HDD of 320 GB with a single partion C (I guess that Windows 7 also creates a 100 MB partition for system use???). On this disk I have installed Windows 7 - 64 bit and some software. I now would like to switch to an SSD disk with 250 GB. What would be the best step by step procedure to achieve this without getting this "alignment problem"???

Hi Dag, with Win7 you will not get this problem, or with using Disk Director 11 which will be released in a blink!

All HDD's have had the alignment problem sorted for a few years - everyone has been waiting for microsoft, yawwwwwwwn

Thats great! Just so that I get this straight!

This means that the procedure for me would look like this:

1. Make a full image backup of the C-drive (the "old conventional HDD) and NOT choosing sector-by-sector backup.
2. Place that image on a USB-drive.
3. Make a Acronis Rescue Media on a USB-stick.
4. Pop in the new SSD-drive.
5. Attach the USB-drive with the full image backup file on it.
5. Boot the computer and choose the USB-stick as the boot device. Restore the image onto the SSD.

????
If above is correct, is it only the "NTFS unlabled C:" I recover, or is it the MBR and Track 0 as well???

I would Clone it Dag

OK, I thought that as my original HDD is larger than the new SSD (320 GB vs. 250GB) I could not use the clone feature???

Ah well ok, you won't be able to clone it and I will have to bow down to my peers because I have never done anything quite like it but it can be done...

please wait on it, I will investigate and ask ok

Dag, Whether you can use the clone feature or not, try it and see. Others have been sometime successful in cloning to a smaller drive so it's difficult to say it will or won't.

1. Make a full image backup of the C-drive (the "old conventional HDD) If above is correct, is it only the "NTFS unlabeled C:" I recover, or is it the MBR and Track 0 as well???

Look at post #6 above. Read it multiple times if necessary.

Open Windows Disk Management graphical view and look at how your partitions are displayed and how many partitions you have. Be observant and take some notes. Write down which one is active and which ones have drive letters. These drive letters may be displayed differently when booted from the TI Rescue CD.

When you create your backup, you must make sure to that all the partitions are checkmarked so all can be included in the backup being used to restore your system to a new blank drive. Note the example shown in first image below. If you backup only the unlabeled one, your new disk will not boot. Before you create your new backup, assign a name to your unlabeled drive. I suggest you label it Win7_C and include the drive letter as shown.

Note what MudCrab wrote in post #6. Your best chance of success is to restore the entire disk which means all the partitions will be restored. Note also that you need to checkmark the "Recover Disk Signature" option which is shown at the bottom left of the screen where you select the SSD disk.

Remember, you can simulate your procedures so you get the feel of what you are doing. It is practice up to the point where you must choose Proceed or Cancel. Click Cancel if only practicing.

I do not have Win7 nor an SSD so others more familiar with your settings will have to help further.

Thanks GroverH! I notice that we might have different software, but I guess that does not change anything?? I am running Acronis True Image Home 2010.

I am also running 2010, b7046. If you are talking about the appearance of the pic, look at this link. You can make your TI picture look like mine so you can see the alignment of the partitions and sectors. I do not have Win7 installed. This is a pic from our grandson's laptop. I change the display of TI so it always shows this disk information. The info can help to prevent a wrong selection.

http://forum.acronis.com/sites/default/files/forum/2010/05/10884/Win7-c…

Your restore steps of 1-6 were ok except that you need to change the type of backup being created so your backup includes all partitions; plus the type of restore also needed to include all partitions plus enable the "recover disk signature" option. Simulate doing the restore so you get the feel of the procedure. Just click cancel rather than proceed when you get to the end.

Hello Team!

I just wanted to shed some light on this subject. First of all, to put it in a nutshell, SSD partition alignment is all about optimizing the performance of read and (more importantly) write operations for the page size of 4KB which is the default for SSD drives. The default Windows XP partition offset is 63 sectors (which aligns the partition to the beginning of the second cylinder) which puts the beginning of the partition right in the middle of an SSD page and because of that every time the operating system tries to write something to the drive, it eventually tries to write the data (the minimal pages of 4KB) to areas that span more sectors than required, thus resulting in some excessive overhead and thus reduction in productivity. You can find more info on this topic on the Internet but all in all, it's all about aligning the physical data structure with the logical data pages SSDs use. This is less of a problem for the conventional HDD drives because users usually choose smaller allocation unit (page) sizes but it's still a hot topic for SQL database administrators who opt for bigger page size.

To summarize the latest data we have got from Acronis developers:
- the currently available products (Acronis True Image Home 2010, Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 etc) do not feature any specific support for the optimal offsets SSD drives require (that is multiples of 64kb);
- when doing restore operations that require partition tables to be re-created or modified (complete disk restore with partition resizing, restoring partitions onto unallocated space etc) the products will assume the default XP alignment which is the beginning of the second cylinder (63rd sector);
- when restoring/cloning drives or partitions that do not involve partition creation or modification of its size, the product will keep the offset you originally had (either that within the image or that of the target partition);
- we are currently developing the page size detection mechanism which will allow us to put in appropriate partition alignments (probably as an option during restore) and thus officially make our products "SSD-compliant". This option will almost certainly make it to Acronis Backup & Recovery 11 line but is still unconfirmed for Acronis True Image Home 2011 due to the time constraints;
- Acronis Disk Director 11 will be detecting the operating system in use and use its default partition alignment for operations with partitions. This means that, irrelevant of the type of the drives in use, it will automatically align partitions properly in an SSD-friendly fashion for Windows Vista/Windows 7 systems (it will use the default Windows Vista alignment of sector 2048 for Windows 7) while Windows XP will still align towards sector 63. That's not much of an issue for Acronis Disk Director though because you can modify those offsets easily using the basic functionality of this program.

I hope this will make things a bit clearer for everyone. This info is pretty much in tune with the tests MudCrab has run. You shouldn't have any problems if you are using the hard drives of the same size (or may be restore backups to the same drive to restore some of the files or partitions) - restoring the whole drive without resizing partitions will work ok for you. Migrating to a drive of a different size may be a bit trickier - while we are implementing the full support for the SSD drives you should stick to creating partitions with the correct offsets prior to the restore and then restoring partitions one by one (or may be even just mounting the partition to restore all the files via copy-paste). There are situations in which this may become tricky but you are now armed with the knowledge of how it works.

Thank you.

Having been a long time Acronis Clinet, I turned to it to help me with my new SSD. I have a Win7/64 setup which I used Acronis to move to the SSD - before reading about the alignment problem and sure enought, it's now sitting at 31. After reading the various appends, I thought I could use Disk Director to "copy" the existing drive to the new SSD and insert the 1024 offset in front, so I purchased Disk Director Home. After looking thru the manual, seemed I needed to "copy" the drive, with a 1024 Offset and swap them - pretty straighforward (or so I thought).

However, when I did a copy today using Director Home and then removed the original HDD and moved the SSD into its place. Windows would not boot so I used the Win7 Recovery Media boot disk to "fix" the MBR.. then Win7 booted but after a few mins of the dreaded "black screen", it complained that this was not an authentic copy of Windows, so it must be related to the "copy" vs the "clone" process.

From reading, it seems I cannot do a "clone" like I normally do using TI2010 until this alignment problem is fixed later this year.

Can someone please explain with detailed steps, how when using Acronis TI2010 with Acronis Director Home 11 together exactly how to move the data to the SSD, while fixing the alignment to 1024 and without triggering the "not geniuine" black screens as I have on my past 3 attempts? 

What the Acronis community needs is a FAQ or KB article from Acronis experts on exactly how (with steps) to accomplish this for Win7 and maybe XP using the Acronis TI2010 Home and Acronis Director Home 11.   Using GPARTed and other linux tools is too convoluted for many Acronis clients, which is why we buy these products.

FWIW, in all the years of using Acronis TI products, I have never had a "not genuine"  appear before with my regular monthly backups where I swap the drives out/in - but in those cases, I use Acronis boot media to CLONE the drives which do not involve a resize which the SSD move does.  This is Win7 Pro/64 bit if that matters to the steps or discussion.

Thanks for your support! G. Mobley

I had the same thing happen to me only no ssd involved. All the sudden after an ATI disk image restore Windows comes up as not genuine. The only difference was My Raid array became corrupted so I rebuilt the whole thing over on to it self. I've been using ATI since 07 and upgraded every year. Maybe we both did something wrong or there is a issue with Win7 x64. It took a complete format and reload to correct the issue and I want to know exactly what went wrong so this doesn't happen again. I was lucky all I lost was a handful of document and some screen shots I had on my desktop but considering what I have shelled out for ATI products I'm a bit peeved. Now I put my desktop folder along with all other data on separate Data drives which are backup to my home server. That, however was for redundancy and my main line of defense (ATI) failed. I find it curious though, that no one responded to your last query yet and it makes me wonder if the problem is more wide spread than google can divulge ATM. I was reading this thread because I have an SSD on another Win7 x64 machine and I'm concerned my ATI backups will work with it. The whole thing is beginning to stink. I hope we get some answers soon and when thay get it figured out it should be a free update to 2010 IMHO. Bottom line ATI2010 says it's Win7 compatible and Win7 is SSD compatible in every way. Really there is no excuse for these inequities. Bare minimum the workarounds should be readily available.

E Wayne Yowell,

Too bad about your need to start from scratch. In your situation, there is a high degree of probability of successful recovery when the restore is a disk option restore.--from a prior disk option backup which included all partitions on the system disk.

Posts #6 and post #19 pretty spell out what SSD capabilities exist within 2010.

Is True Image Home 2010 still not 4k sector aware?

I'm not buying it until I can make an image of a fresh Windows 7 install on my SSD and be able to restore it with proper alignment being restored as well without having to use a separate utility to restore proper alignment.

Considering no one company in the backup business can make that claim right now you and I are SOL.

I have read on the OCZ forums the Paragon Pro Suite edition which includes there PAT tool specifically for aligning SSD is known to do the job effectively but again no official support on the backup side. It appears there is a work around involved.

http://www.paragon-software.com/business/partition-alignment/

Ok, well it looks like there are alot of people out there that have made backups using Acronis True Image 2010 that have restored their backups and have verified that the restored backup / image kept the proper 4k alignment.

Read this on Anandtech, Hardforums and Extremesystems. Question now is why Acronis' employees don't know that True Image can do this...

Hello all!

Thank you for your comments, and many thanks to GroverH for his valuable assistance.

We entirely understand your concern regarding SSD alignment question. Officially SSD alignment is not supported in current versions of Acronis products.

SSD alignment support will not be implemented to Acronis True Image Home 2010.  The proper support for SSD drives which takes into account the specifics of the partitions offset is planned for the next version of  Acronis True Image Home product, which is reported to be Acronis True Image Home 2011. You can find more information about SSD support in this KB article.

We have just released Beta version of it, so it would be nice if you could join us and test it to see whether it suits your needs. 

If you’d like to join in our current beta program and try our new product, you will need to register first here.

In case you are already registered in our beta program you will need to log in to your existing account here. 

Our Development team will be glad to address every your question or concern in our special Acronis True Image Home Beta Forum.

Should you need anything else or have any further questions - feel free to contact us at your earliest convenience, we will be happy to help you!

Thank you!

Now that Acronis 2011 is on sale, can anyone confirm its SSD compatibility vis-à-vis proper alignment?
Thanks.

I JUST got off a tech support chat. I've been waiting for the new version for the exact same reason.  The answer: NO !!

Acronis KB kb.acronis.com/content/2699 says, "The proper support for SSD drives which takes into account the specifics of the partitions offset is planned for the next version of the Acronis Backup & Recovery and Acronis True Image Home product lines."

The "next" version is here, but partition alignment is NOT implemented, according to the tech support person I just chatted to. She/He apologized and said it was planned for the NEXT version. There is NO mention of alignment in the user manual either.   I can't help considering that perhaps it's time to switch to Paragon.  I made the switch from [Drive Image] years ago, when Acronis proved the better product, and perhaps the time has come once again to move on.

Here is a transcript of my chat: 

<chat transcript was deleted. Please do not post any private conversations or data on public source>

Thanks for the update Howard. I have used and recommended Acronis since its original versions (all registered). Looks like I will be joining you in becoming a Paragon customer.

A very quick and bottom line comment as I understand it.

If your existing system has proper alignment, then 2010 & 2011 TrueImage Home will retain and restore that alignment.

If your existing system does not have proper alignment, you can use Win 7 to create the partitions on a blank disk and the new partition alignment will be retained when the backup restored to the new disk.

GroverH wrote:

A very quick and bottom line comment as I understand it.

If your existing system has proper alignment, then 2010 & 2011 TrueImage Home will retain and restore that alignment.

If your existing system does not have proper alignment, you can use Win 7 to create the partitions on a blank disk and the new partition alignment will be retained when the backup restored to the new disk.

GroverH You are absolutely right. Your posts across this forum have been consistently on the mark and very helpful. However it is frustrating to find that a brand-new version of Acronis does not directly and fully, address this particular issue, workarounds not withstanding. SSD's are here to stay and one of the most significant hardware improvements to modern-day PCs. If Microsoft can build allowances and enhancements to both Vista and Windows 7 to take advantage of SSD's it seems absurd for a smaller, supposedly more agile, software company to ignore this issue. It's a competitive market, and for this reason (SSD alignment) Paragon wins by a nose for this particular, erstwhile loyal customer.

I'm confused by 'if your existing system'. Do you mean existing target SSD has proper alignment?

If I align a new SSD drive (which I'll do with the repair option in a vista repair disk), can I clone my existing non-ssd Windows Xp system partition to the SSD and be good to go? I can't clone the whole disk of course because the source is too large, and just want the system boot partition to the SSD.

I have DD11 and TI11.

The "existing system" is the source partition. If the source partition is aligned correctly for SSD, then when you create a backup image of it and restore it, it will still be aligned. Note that this only works with TI 2010 and later (if I remember correctly). Earlier versions of TI will always realign the partition to XP standards unless you do an Entire Disk Image restore.

Using TI 2010 or later, you should be able to take an image of a partition that is not aligned (an XP partition, for example) and restore it to a previously created aligned partition on the SSD and retain the alignment.

I have not tested with DD 11 on copying a partition, but it may work if you have the correct OS selected so it uses the correct alignment. My tests with TI were done using standard Vista/Win7 aligned partitions.

Just to confirm what's been said, really.
I just made a complete disk backup from my 2 disk SSD RAID 0. Partition was correctly aligned with Paragon Alignment Tool before the backup was made.
Removed both SSDs from the RAID, in BIOS. Updated both SSD's firmware. Recreated RAID 0 in BIOS and restored via TIH 2011.
Partition was correctly aligned, verified with Paragon Alignment Tool.

Important follow-up to my earlier post: I have done some tests, and alignment situation is not as dire as I thought.  Acronis True Image 2010 Home does restore images with correct alignment if they were aligned that way already.   This post covers 2 things:  Testing of restoring images with correct alignment, and discovering bugs in function of the program unrelated to alignment.

The testing I did tonight used Acronis True Image 2010 Home (current build, 7,046) installed on a Windows XP Home laptop.  All backup tests were imaged from drives attached externally via USB external enclosure, and made directly from ATI Home 2010 running within the XP operating system, with backups saved (.tib files) on the local (internal) drive. (I did not test functionality of ATI via bootable CD media.)  Restored partitions were created the same way, restoring from saved .tib files on the internal drive, restoring to externally attached drive.

(For anyone needing refresher on the alignment issue, Windows 7 installs at (and creates partitions) that start at sector 2048.  XP and earlier defaulted to a partition start at sector 63.  SSD drives need to be aligned at 2048, or their performance is cut in half.)

Test 1.) Create backup image of a Windows 7 drive, which had correct 2048 alignment, and restore to another hard drive. Partition size not adjusted in restore. > The restored partition was correctly aligned.

Test 2.) Created almost empty test partitions to backup and restore.  As long as the first partition was 'correctly' aligned at 2048 to start with, ATI Home 2010 would restore partitions with that alignment.  Many tests, here's one permutation method: Created partitions A, B and C, each directly after each other:  
[Partition A: 22GB] [Partition B: 3.5GB] [Partition C: 1GB]  Partition A was aligned at sector 2048.  
 i.) Backup image of whole drive. 
 ii.) Delete Partition A using XP disk management, leaving 22GB unallocated space in beginning of disk.
 iii.) Restore Partition C from backup image to the unallocated space
>>> Result: Partition C (1GB) is  aligned at 2048, as desired, at beginning of disk.

NOTE:  I discovered bizarre bugs along the way.  These are not related to partition alignment per se, but the Acronis Home 2010 restore behavior.  Perhaps these bugs are resolved in ATI Home 2011, I don't know, but this is what I found just in my limited testing:

Attempts to resize partitions being restored bigger than they were originally, to fill unallocated space, did not work correctly. There are bugs in the program.  In Test 2 above, I tried to restore Partition C, originally 1GB, to fill more of the 22GB unallocated space.  ATI Home 2010 would allow me to modify ("Change default") and set my chosen partition size to restore, however after restore was complete, the partition was exactly its original size.  True Image did not resize it bigger.  

I continued testing different ways, and found the "bug" in the program and the work-around: If I chose to increase partition size via slider, simply selecting to resize the restored partition larger, it would not work, and the summary page (after clicking "Next" button) before proceeding would indicate the partition's original size.  However, if I didn't proceed, but rather repeated the resize selection options a second time by clicking on "Settings of Partition [drive letter]" on the list of Required steps, again chose to "Change default" for partition size (where my previously chosen resized size had not changed,) again clicked on "Accept" button, and once again clicked "Next", this time the summary for Recovering partition reflected the chosen size change as, for example: "Size: 1.004 GB -> 4.007 GB" and choosing to Proceed did, indeed, resize the partition.  The same would work if I chose to MOVE the resized partition, i.e. leaving space before the default location.  Thus when making "two" changes, not just resizing but 'moving' partition along with a resize, the repeat of the resize procedure would not be necessary.  This is clearly a bug, not sure how replicated this issue is with other OS's or in bootable media tests.

 Note: There did not seem to be a problem with choosing to resize restored partitions to be smaller than their original size (obviously can't make them smaller than the amount of actual space used by files contained inside.)  ATI had no issues automatically resizing larger partition images to smaller, to fit unallocated space that was less than the original partition size.  Also, manually resizing partitions smaller did not result in the 'bug' that I found when trying to resize partitions larger.

Second bug found:  ATI Home 2010 would not properly distinguish unallocated space if it was broken up into more than one area.  In the case of a drive layout of: [2GB partition] [4GB unallocated space] [7GB partition] [15GB unallocated space]  I tried to restore a 1GB partition to the 4GB unallocated space between the first two partitions.  ATI home would select the larger, 15GB unallocated space at the end, not the 4GB I chose; I would choose the 4GB space in the "Specify recover settings of Partition []" choosing the option "New location" for the "Partition location (required)" section, but the partition size section would always show that 14GB was going to be remaining directly after the restored partition. If the restore was attempted, sure enough, the restored partition was created in the wrong unallocated space.  The ONLY way to get the 1GB partition restored to the 4GB unallocated space was to cancel the restore, use the operating system's disk management to create a 'dummy' partition to fill the larger 15GB unallocated space, then go back to ATI and then it would restore to that unallocated 4GB space.  It's as if it will only work with ONE contiguous area of unallocated space.  If you have more unallocated space, you cannot be sure you will be restoring to the space you expect.  This type of bug worries me, since I cannot be confident that the program will restore to where I want.  I have not tested it, but what if partitions are named the same, will it not be able to tell them apart? 

Well, that's all for now.  For myself, I am not 100% confident in the functionality of the program, but at least I know I can create images of partitions aligned at 2048, and successfully restore them while preserving that alignment.  That was my main goal, but it was distressing to uncover rather serious bugs just in my limited testing.  (And I have not searched the forums to see if these are already documented, but I wanted to share my experience.)

 Additional tests to answer questions re: how to restore an image of partition that was not aligned into an aligned state, and Disk Director 11 alignment question.

I can verify that restoring image of a 'non-aligned' partition to a previously or properly aligned empty partition using ATI 2010 Home does work!

FYI, I'm testing using 2 computers.  One has DD 10.  Then other has ATI 2010 Home.  

1) On an old, spare 30GB drive, I created a 15GB partition in XP, which aligned at sector 63 (i.e. "non-aligned")
2) I used ATI Home 2010 to create a backup image of that partition.  
3) I then deleted the original drive partition, and created a full partition to fill the available 30GB drive (=27.9GB)  
4) This partition I then "aligned" using Paragon Alignment Tool.  (Paragon tool aligns at sector 4096, which is fine, but I have been using older Acronis Disk Director suite 10 after Paragon tool, to resize the partition, 'moving' it to the very "front" which clears the extra 1MB unallocated space Paragon tool leaves.  I also resize it on the other side, to fill remaining space.  This leaves me with a "fully" partitioned drive, with correct alignment at sector 2048.)
5) I then used ATI Home 2010 to restore the image of the 15GB partition that was originally aligned at sector 63.  I chose the 27.9GB aligned partition as the destination.  ATI didn't ask me, but configured itself to increase the restored size of my 15GB partition to fill the available space.  (This might be an issue for those needing to move a partition of one size into another size.  One can adjust the size of the resulting restored partition, but for this test I let it keep the default value.) 
6) The resulting restored "xp" partition, 27.9GB, is now aligned at sector 2048.  BINGO!

Regarding Disk Director 11 Home:  I did successfully use DD 11 to clone an entire drive and it preserved alignment, but I had problems booting to Windows - but maybe not fault of the cloning.  It was a Windows 7 installation, properly aligned drive from a ThinkPad.  There are other issues particular to ThinkPad partitions, not to be delved into here, but the drive has 3 partitions. This was in the process of migrating a Windows 7 installation on a traditional HDD to SSD.  I mostly used the DD 11 bootable media (CD) I created to perform the tasks. I started by doing a full clone from the original 500GB drive to another 500GB drive, since I wanted to preserve the original drive in almost factory condition in case things went bad. The clone kept original correct alignment.  I then used DD 11 to resize the main Win7 partition (which is the 2nd partition on the drive) and 3rd partition to accommodate the size of my intended final drive destination, a 160GB SSD.  The final clone to SSD was performed with DD 11, it preserved alignment, but I had not cloned the third partition to the SSD.  (I thought I would try without it, since it is ostensibly for recovery only.) But Windows 7 did not boot from the newly cloned SSD.  I don't know if this was issues with the special ThinkPad partitions (the first partition is used to boot the main Win7 partition, which is the 2nd partition,) but I got success after putting back the non-SSD drive, booting back to Win7 that way, and using Windows 7's own native disk partition resizing tool to resize my SSD Win7 partition a bit smaller, while it was in external enclosure, and then DD 11 to clone/copy the third partition to SSD.  After that, the SSD booted to Windows 7 perfectly.  Again, if I had started with cloning all 3 partitions to SSD with DD 11, perhaps it would have booted, but I was working on a goal, and not trying to "test" the software at the time, like I have today.

This seems to be a bit too technical for me, but from the small fragments I think I grasp, there is a real problem if getting wrong alignment with any hard disk(?), and the effect of this, as I take it from the above discussion, is even more serious if this happens to SSD-disks(?).

Do I have to buy this Paragon Aligment Tool in order just to CHECK whether my SSD-disks (and the other HDD:s) are properly aligned, or is there any easier way to do this?

IF they are NOT aligned the way they should be, is there any other way to get them aligned, or is PAT the best tool to do this?

As I take the discussion above, I have to see to that my discs are properly aligned BEFORE taking images with Acronis True Image Home, in order to (if I have to) restore the images and preserve proper alignment???

Is my understanding correct?

This seems to be a bit too technical for me, but from the small fragments I think I grasp, there is a real problem if getting wrong alignment with any hard disk(?), and the effect of this, as I take it from the above discussion, is even more serious if this happens to SSD-disks(?).

Do I have to buy this Paragon Aligment Tool in order just to CHECK whether my SSD-disks (and the other HDD:s) are properly aligned, or is there any easier way to do this?

IF they are NOT aligned the way they should be, is there any other way to get them aligned, or is PAT the best tool to do this?

As I take the discussion above, I have to see to that my discs are properly aligned BEFORE taking images with Acronis True Image Home, in order to (if I have to) restore the images and preserve proper alignment???

Is my understanding correct?

Paragon Alignment Tool was available for free until July 31st this year. The link to obtain it is still live but I'm not sure if it'll still go through.

http://www.paragon-software.com/landing-pages/WhitePapers/paragon_align…

If you register for the white paper, they send a link to the x86 and x64 versions. May still work...

ati 2011 bugs or what bugs me.

Restored an aligned ssd disk with 2011 and lost the ssd alignment. resorted with 2010 and alignment was restored. Probably did something wrong but it was not easy like 2010.

2nd bug. I am doing this from memory since I have already uninstalled 2011. Settings are lost in scheduler under under custom settings if the advanced backup options are saved first.

MudCrab wrote:

The "existing system" is the source partition. If the source partition is aligned correctly for SSD, then when you create a backup image of it and restore it, it will still be aligned. Note that this only works with TI 2010 and later (if I remember correctly). Earlier versions of TI will always realign the partition to XP standards unless you do an Entire Disk Image restore.

Using TI 2010 or later, you should be able to take an image of a partition that is not aligned (an XP partition, for example) and restore it to a previously created aligned partition on the SSD and retain the alignment.

I have not tested with DD 11 on copying a partition, but it may work if you have the correct OS selected so it uses the correct alignment. My tests with TI were done using standard Vista/Win7 aligned partitions.

Thanks for the reply and testing. Once I learned about AHCI support tho I went ahead and reinstalled my windows XP installation anyways to simplify switching to it, so issues reg. restoring a previous backup was moot.

If I'm not mistaken tho, as a longtime acronis customer, I find it remarkable that there isn't more direct product support for these drives as well as more direct documentation of what can and can't be done.

Seriously, did SSD's fall out of the sky yesterday? I don't believe so.

After my reinstall of Windows XP and TI11, I've been gradually getting my system reinstalled and incrementally backing it up with TI11 along the way.

In the process, I've learned that TI11 DID NOT retain the proper alignment.

Using Diskpar to align and verify alignment, I started with this:

Drive 1 geometry info:
Cyllinders = 4865
Tracksper= 255
Sectorsper= 63
BytesPerSector= 512
Disksize = ...40,015,987,200 bytes, 38162mb

Drive Partition 0 info:
StatringOffset = 524,288
PartitionLength = 8,912,896,000
HiddenSectors= 1024
PartitionNumber = 1
PartitionType = 7

After restoring from a TI11 incremented image, I finished with this:

Drive 0 Geometry Information
Cylinders - 4865
TracksPerCylinder - 255
SectorsPerTrack - 63
BytesPerSector - 512
DiskSize - 40015987200 (bytes) - 38162 (mb)

Drive Partition 0 Info
StatringOffset - 32256
PartitionLength - 8907945984
HiddenSectors - 63
PartitionNumber - 1
PartitionType - 7

I initially restored from an incremented backup and don't know if this misalignment problem occured with the increment, or also if TI11 is vulnerable with original file backups as well. Restoring the original backup file did not solve the problem.

Hi Everyone,

Joining the SSD enthusiastics and just found out (with the excellent AS SSD Benchmark tool) that my first partition is aligned at 31K (!!) so NOT aligned!
I was thinking about backuping my C: and D: partition, zap the whole drive, create 2 aligned partitions with the W7 boot process and then restore my 2 partitions, which should retain alignement BUT ... it seems that TI2011, freshly purchased, would not retain it!!!!!!!

So what am I supposed to do!!!!!!! and WTH TI2010 does it properly but not more recent 2011????? (which BTW is not ready for primetime, already found 2 bugs)

Acronis: any hint would be useful ...

Chasewick,

TI 11 will not preserve the alignment (original partition positions) unless you created an Entire Disk Image backup (checked the Disk # box) and then did an Entire Disk Image restore. Restoring just the partition will realign to XP standards (63).

---

Dominique Remy,

TI 2011 should do what you want. TI 11 is an older version (ver. 8, 9, 10, 11, 2009, 2010, 2011).

Ooops I wasnt aware of there was a TI11. In my case I meant TI Home 2011 so you are saying I am ok.

Restoring just the partition into an existing blank aligned partition will do the trick but the partition MUST be manually created before?
Sorry to insist but with data restore, we cannot be too careful :-)
No issue with SSD error 1 or something like that upon restore? this is a boot partition
How would you proceed ;-) why dont I ask first!

would you use the Win7 source cd to do that? I need to create the partitions without reinstalling Windows of course ...

And by the way, currently I only have a C: and D: no 100 meg partition (I had to get rid of it to make old Truecrypt work at the time)
Maybe there is a way to "push" the partition just enough to go from the wrong offset to the right one? any tool that can do that?

I have not tested on an actual SSD yet. I've just run tests on retaining the alignment.

The aligned partitions must be created first (you can use the Windows 7 installer to do that). Then just restore a partition into the existing partition (the booting partition will need to be Active) and you should be set. If you need to restore the MBR, you can do that separately.

I am switching over to Paragon now, I bought two upgrades from Acronis just a few weeks ago, and then they wanted to charge me for the 2011 the upgrade as well! I am not very comfortable with that kind of relation! Sorry!

MudCrab wrote:

I have not tested on an actual SSD yet. I've just run tests on retaining the alignment.

The aligned partitions must be created first (you can use the Windows 7 installer to do that). Then just restore a partition into the existing partition (the booting partition will need to be Active) and you should be set. If you need to restore the MBR, you can do that separately.

I see what you mean, but remember I would go from:
C: + D: to [hidden 100Mo] + C: + D:
so is the old C: will fit into the new C:, isnt there a risk of bringing too much and get an unbootable system ...
Maybe the Paragon Alignement Tool would be sufficient?

If you don't currently have the 100MB System Reserved partition, don't create it on the SSD. Just create the partition for C: and the partition for D:. Then cancel the install, boot to the TI CD, and restore your partitions.

Using the installer, you can create the partitions you want (advanced section). You'd only get the 100MB partition if you actually installed to the unallocated SSD.

You can certainly try PAT if you want, but you still have to get the partitions "copied" to the SSD.

MudCrab wrote:

You can certainly try PAT if you want, but you still have to get the partitions "copied" to the SSD.

Nope, currently my misaligned partitions are ALREADY on my SSD :-) I just need to realign them so PAT would juste move the partition and its data just enough to get it (them) aligned! I just need some free space after C: I guess

Or as you said, backup, recreate and restore I guess ... damn I didnt get PAT when it was FREE ....