ATIH2009 and Advanced Format Disks...

Hi all,

Since being first introduced to Advanced Format Disks at work some months ago (and the immediate problems with putting our Workstation standard build XP image onto them), I've been reading up on them like crazy - but since buying a 2TB disk for expansion at home, now having to look at my ATIH2009's compatibility....

My (2006, but still going strong!) system was Windows XP, upgraded to Win7 (+ dual-boot to XP), with a couple of original sub-500GB (i.e. non-AF) disks, for which I always used the ATIH2009 boot media to back up - no problems, restores of whole (Win7/XP dual-boot) system disk, or data disk, always worked. Ran out of space on the data disk, so have just bought a 2TB disk (which is, of course, now AF), but keeping it below 3GB so I can (and have) formatted it in Win 7, so that the 512/4k sector alignment is correct, and also kept it as an MBR disk (i.e. not GPT), as I dual-boot to Windows XP. But now I need to move the (470GB) of data from the 500GB Data Disk to the new 2TB Disk....

After Win7 formatting the 2TB (alignment = good), I then used ATIH2009 boot media to clone the 500GB to the newly formatted 2TB. As I suspected (but hoped not), afterwards, the 2TB was no longer aligned - I assume that as the original 500GB disk was 'normal' 512B sectors (being non-AF), it simply cloned the whole disk starting at the 512B sector offset, hence not aligned properly...?? So cloning appears not to be an option here...????

I then re-formatted the new 2TB disk in Win7 again, (checked - aligned ok) and threw a few GB of data onto it using Windows explorer/copy. I then used ATIH2009 boot media to back it up (whole disk backup, full backup); then deleted some of the test data on the new 2TB disk; then booted again from ATIH2009 boot media, and did a complete disk (including boot sector/MBR, as I had always done) restore from the backup/archive ".tib" file, to the new 2TB disk. I suspected (but again hoped not) that the restoration of the *whole disk* would once again put the alignment offset back to being misaligned - but surprisingly, it didn't. After the restore, my data was back, and it appears aligned.

This is not the behaviour I was expecting from ATIH2009 (due to the FAQ's that state that it is not an Acronis product that is 4k aware). I had assumed that I might have had to restore the data from the backup/archive, but not the MBR, etc. (which I have not normally done in the past - I only ever restore the whole [non-AF] disk, MBR and all).

I was therefore just after some re-assurance from anyone in these forums that may have used the combination of ATIH2009 and AF disks, that the behaviour I witnessed is in fact correct - i.e. when using ATIH2009 boot media to back up an advanced format disk that had previously been formatted by an OS that understands alignment and had correctly aligned the first offset byte to a 4k boundary, that restoring from that backup retains the correct 1st byte offset/retains the 512/4k alignment on the restore target disk?

I don't want to transfer 470GB of data (by Windows explorer copy, I assume) to the new disk, and then find a further issue....

Or if there is another way of using ATIH2009 backup/restore (or something else?) to migrate my data (retaining the 512/4k alignment), I'd be pleased to hear it.....

And lastly - I assume that ATIH2012 (without Plus pack) would clone correctly from an non-AF to an AF disk, with the target disk being aligned properly (due to it being aware of AF/4k disks)? Or not..?? (All disks are NTFS simple volumes - system disk has 3 partitions; old 500GB data disk and new 2TB data disk both have a single partition - no Dynamic Disks, as far as I am aware...?).

Many thanks,

P.

Whoops - Just realised that I've written a novel. Apologies - but I hope all relevant info. is in there..