DD11 - 4k alignment ?
as far as i can see there is no easy way to verify and achieve proper 4k alignment by using disk director 11? at least when booting off the rescue media.
that's sad, because this is one of the reasons why i have purchased this DD tool: i want to "resize" and "move" partitions.
so why does it allow me to resize a partition and configure "non-allocated space before the volume" to something like "13 bytes" ??
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1) for any of the official operations i'd appreciate an automatic check for proper alignment that pops up a warning in case i'm trying to do something stupid.
2) i'd also appreciate a dedicated functionality "check for compatible partition alignment" that can be invoked on either a partition or an entire drive.
and by the way: i'd also expect the same type of automatic checking and warning prompts when restoring partitions via ATI 2011 (acronis true image 2011).
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[edit] i forgot to clearly state the intention of this posting:
a) i'm requesting this functionality to be implemented in the products by acronis.
b) until then - can somebody assist how to manually ensure proper alignment?
thanks for your reply, mark!
however, i'm still clueless:
1) i have never understood what this is all about: "select an OS for which you want to manage disks". and then it shows some label "disk layout" in the top right corner. what's the purpose of doing such kind of selection. and what difference does it make?
2) as to my current problem: right now i have 2 HDDs with 9 partitions in total. i don't want to create any new partitions, i just want to "verify" whether all partitions are aligned properly. i can't find any way to check this kind of information (regarding start address) in the DD GUI. i assume that one solution would be to switch to the linux console by hitting CTRL-ALT-F2 and dispatching some commands there?
i just tried "fdisk -l" and for my disks it's listing the following "start" values in "units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes":
hdd1: 1, 13, 26, 14674
hdd2: 1, 12749, 12762, 27410, 230454
are those the numbers i need to check for?
on the other hand: i just checked a copy of my OSS config file "bootwiz.oss" which contains the following entries for my partitions:
begin="2048"
begin="206848"
begin="411648"
begin="235728896"
begin="63"
begin="204796620"
begin="205005465"
begin="440328192"
begin="3702228992"
it looks much different than the output by the linux "fdisk -l". however, i'm not sure of my copy of that *.oss file is up to date.
does anybody have an idea how to manually validate my partition alignment this way?
phillippg:
1. The purpose of the Disk Layout selection in DD 11 is to choose which set of partition layout rules to use. Windows XP and earlier, as well as most Linux distros, use 63-sector offset rules (63 sectors = 31.5 kB). Windows Vista and Windows 7 use a newer set of rules with offsets of 2048 sectors (1024 kB or 1 MB) between the start of the disk and the first partition, and all boundaries between partitions are multiples of 1024 kB.
Acronis offers you the choice of which set of rules to use, although I must admit that their method has several flaws and doesn't make what it is doing very clear to the user. On the boot CD, if you choose "Bootable Media Environment" for the Disk Layout, DD 11 will use the newer Windows 7/Vista partitioning rules. If you are looking for partitions to be aligned for an SSD or RAID, then this is the proper choice.
2. You have a mix of layouts on your two disks. The first disk uses Windows 7 rules (partitions begin on multiples of 2048 sectors) and has four partitions, going by the information near the end of your last post (the bootwiz.oss output that lists the starting sector of each partition). Your second disk has a mix of rules. The first three partitions were created to the old standard because the starting sector of each is evenly divisible by 63. The last two partitions on this disk were created or modified by Windows 7 (or Vista) because their starting sectors are evenly divisible by 2048.
Here are some other ways to display partition alignments. In Windows 7 or Vista, start an elevated command prompt and start the command-line program diskpart. The following is a screen capture of my laptop's SSD, partitioned by Windows 7.
If you want to display the starting sectors using DD 11, display the column "Start", which is not selected by default. To display this column, right-click on the column headings (which show Volume, capacity, Free space, etc) and put a checkmark next to "Start":
Then the display should look like this:
Disk 1 was partitioned by WinXP and shows the first partition's start sector at 31.5 kB. Disk 2 looks strange since it shows 64 kB instead of 1024 kB for the second disk's alignment values. That's because it's a small disk (only 1 GB) on a VM. Larger disks would show 1024 kB.
Hope this helps...
1)
i still don't understand why i have to select the "disk layout" and this will lead to a different "set of rules".
also, in various other threads the "partition alignment" is often discussed in the context of SSD. and the alignment "rules" are often discussed in the context of the various operating system.
as far as i have understood this is all irrelevant.
we should ignore all those conditions listed above.
a) it does not matter whether i'm using a SSD or a regular HDD.
b) it does not matter whether my device is using regular 512bytes sectors or 4k sectors. and in case of 4k it does not matter whether it's exposing it in 512bytes emulation mode or as native 4k.
c) it does not matter whether i'm using dos or windows xp or vista or windows 7 or linux.
so we can conclude:
to make life simple there's just one single rule that should be followed:
in case of a regular MBR partition table: always ensure that all partitions are properly aligned to the 4k boundaries.
this is independent from the disk type and configuration.
this is independent from the operating system using the particular partitions.
simple as that. but maybe i'm wrong with this assumption?
2)
regarding the linux console:
previously i was using "fdisk -l". this will display the start values as "cylinders".
i'm now using "fdisk -ul". this will display the start values as "sectors".
and now it shows the same start values as in bootwiz.oss:
hdd1: 2048, 206848, 411648, 235728896
hdd2: 63, 204796620, 205005465, 440328192, 3702228992
as you had confirmed already: the partitions on my second HDD violates the rule that "all start sectors should be evenly divisible by 2048".
so now the question would be: how can i fix it?
i have ran accross a tool by a competitor: paragon alignment tool
it offers exactly the kind of functionality i'd expect to be included in acronis disk director. take a look at slide #10: for each of the partitions the tool is listing whether it's properly aligned or not. and there's a one-click button to fix it :)
well, i'm not going to buy any additional tool. i'll stick with the acronis tools ATI 2011 (incl plus pack) and DD11 (incl OSS).
any ideas how to fix my partitions?
3)
i have also noticed some additional warning when using "fdisk -ul".
"partition 1 does not end on cylinder boundary" (this is on 1st HDD). similar warning for "partition 4" on 2nd HDD.
is this something i should also try to fix?
phillippg:
1) In a few years, you will be absolutely correct when all of the available tools use the new set of partitioning rules, and all of the old tools and operating systems are no longer in use. At present, there are still a lot of older operating systems and a lot of older tools that use the old set of partitioning rules. Mixing tools can lead to unpredicatable results, and in some cases, data loss. The safest course of action at the present time is to use "new tools" to modify 2048-sector aligned partitions and to use "old tools" to modify 63-sector aligned partitions. DD11 was attempting to allow the user to choose the rules to use, but they implemented this awkwardly.
2) The simplest way to fix your second disk with Acronis tools is to back up all of your partitions with TI 2011. Then use DD11 (from the boot disk) to delete all of the existing partitions on disk 2. Create new partitions in the "Bootable Media Environment" layout setting. All partitions will then be aligned, but empty. Finally, restore each partition from your True Image backup. If restoring to an existing partition, TI will use the existing partition table entries and preserve the alignment.
You would think that DD 11 would have provided a way to easily "move" each partition into 2048-sector alignment, but I haven't found this to be true. My tests have shown that DD 11 will create new partitions that start on 2048-sector multiples but it does not enforce the rule that all partition boundaries start and stop on multiples of 2048 sectors when moving partitions.
3) Linux fdisk is checking the partition table to see if all partitions start/end on multiples of 63 sectors. It is an "old tool". Since your disk #1 is aligned to 2048-sector boundaries, you will always see this error message. Ignore it.