OS Partition Image (not alligned) to new SSD?
Hi there,
First post here but I have been searching all afternoon for an answer. I have made a partition back up of my current OS partition with TIH 2011 but after reading some posts about alignment I checked my current drive. For some reason my current mechanical drive is not alligned, info below is from diskpart
Partition 1 Primary 64 GB 31 KB (offset)
So what I want to do is put the partition image (from the old HDD) on the new SSD and make it alligned.
If I put a 1mb (1024) spacer before the restored partition will this fix the alignment?


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The OS I'm using is Windows 7 64 bit Pro and I do have the installation DVD.
What I'm trying to do now is install Windows to the new SSD then restore the partition image with Acronis to the new SSD. I've read a few posts on another forum that says this works so I'm giving it a try.
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The best way to make sure that your partitions are aligned is to use the installation DVD to partition your SSD disk.
- if the SSD disk is not blank (ie already formatted somehow), use DISKPART from the DVD command prompt. Type "LIST DISK" this will show you all the disks installed. Find out which one is your SSD. If there is doubt, unplug all other disks. "SELECT DISK x where x is the number for the SSD". "CLEAN": this will erase all structure information on the disk and all data will be lost.
- reboot with the installation DVD. Choose install WIn 7. At one point, you can partition your Disk. Let Windows do that for you. Most likely it will create a system reserved partition and a system partition. Everything will be aligned.
- at this point, you can continue installing Win 7, or restore an installation you already have.
- If you restore, make sure you restore the previous system partition on the system partition and you don't restore the MBR/track 0 from your backup. For the restore destination options, choose primary, but not active (system reserved is active).
Let us know where you are there.
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Thanks for the response but I got it working in a very similar way. All my programs are working great and everything is much faster running from the SSD. I used the steps listed in this guide:
http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/75127-partition-image-restore-hdd-…
Also Acronis TIH 2011 automatically puts a 1mb spacer before the partition when you restore (default settings) so when restoring a non-aligned partition to a new SSD it works like a charm.
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