TI 2010 and SSD in Windows 7
Are there any issues cloning an SSD drive with Windows 7 x64 onto another drive and reinstalling back to a clean SSD? I read something about alignment on a forum:
"Acronis does clone systems without regard to whether the source or target is SSD or HDD, but be aware that when cloning to an SSD, it will align the partition to a 31.5KB boundary (offset of 63 sectors, a "track" boundary on an HDD). This isn't the end of the world, but will marginally reduce your SSD performance, and somewhat reduce its lifetime. SSD partitions should be aligned to 512 or 1024KB for optimal performance and longevity.
I have Acronis 11, which under the new naming scheme would be 2008. It definitely ignores the alignment of the source disk, regardless of mode, and creates a new partition at C/H/S of 0/1/0 (offset 31.5KB) on the target disk."
Dmitry,
I like hearing from Acronis that there is a certain way of restoring partition alignment. Thank you.
On the same topic, the OCZ Forums has a little tutorial for restoring to an SSD using Acronis by doing it in two passes. The first pass you restore the partition(s) but not the MBR and Track 0. Then go back and restore MBR and Track 0 and not the partitions. Does this make any sense? Does that mean that restoring the MBR and Track 0 does essentially what you are saying of restoring the partition table for the whole disk (even if just some of the partitions are restored)? And if it does that, do they have the order of steps backwards?
Thanks.
Tom
Tom:
I'd like to hear Dmitry's take on this also, but the procedure you're quoting from the OCZ forums makes no sense to me. The first pass, restoring all of the partitions, will (as far as I understand it) cause TI to use the partition table from the image, thus preserving the alignment of the source disk. The reason that this will happen is that when you choose all of the partitions on the disk, TI "knows" that it is safe to restore a copy of the old partition table.
The second pass where you restore only MBR and Track 0 will accomplish absolutely nothing. This operation restores everything in the first 63 sectors on the disk EXCEPT the partition table. So this step is unnecessary. The deed was done in step one.
Yes Mark, I agree. Maybe that's why there seems to be some comments (www.ocztechnologyforum.com/forum/showthread.php) with people having problems. Maybe the second step, in fact, can cause problems.
Indeed, I just noticed that I posted back in April with problems and questioned the order of doing the restore. However, in retrospect, I believe I was determining alignment incorrectly back then so my particular comments are partly off base.
Anyway, it's good to know that whole disk restoration can preserve the alignment.