TIH 2011 and SSD drives

The best of my knowledge, this issue has not been resolved in the latest version.

Hello Carl and Snakeyes!

Thank you for your comments and for finding time to open the thread regarding this question! I understand your concern, and will be glad to shed the light to the situation.

We have added full support of SSD to the latest versions of our homeproducts, you can see it stated in this KB article, so we don't expect any issues with it.

Snakeyes, we're a bit concerned about you reporting that the issue is still present. I've carefully checked our internal resources, and found no mention of an issue, related to Acronis True Image Home 2011 and Solid State Drives. Could you please kindly give us more details regarding what failed to work, and what steps you've taken before encountered an issue? 

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!

My apologies to all regarding my " incorrect" statement. I was looking at some early comments and posts when 2011 first came out. I am glad that it does address SSD issues.

I presume, 2011 will now restore boot partitions from an old drive with the correct alignment without having to pre-partition new SSD drives, and there is no need to do a "full drive" restore?
I, and many others, would be very interested if any users have successfully restored "partitions not full drives" successfully. Thanks.

As far as where I got my information ---Please check out these fairly recent posts

http://forum.acronis.com/forum/14779

http://forum.acronis.com/forum/15877

http://forum.acronis.com/forum/15634

http://forum.acronis.com/forum/14779

http://forum.acronis.com/forum/3823
"- 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;" Sergey Sergeev
Acronis Employee

Snakeyes,

If you restore a partition that is not aligned, then it will be not aligned on the SSD.

If you clone to an SSD the partitions will be aligned.

If you have a non aligned partition which you 'recover' to an SSD, the way to subsequently align it is to clone the SSD contents to a spare drive and then clone from the spare drive back again. Partition will then be aligned.

Colin B wrote:

Snakeyes,

If you restore a partition that is not aligned, then it will be not aligned on the SSD.

If you clone to an SSD the partitions will be aligned.

If you have a non aligned partition which you 'recover' to an SSD, the way to subsequently align it is to clone the SSD contents to a spare drive and then clone from the spare drive back again. Partition will then be aligned.

Colin are you referring to 2011 ?

As background, I have used different versions of Acronis for several years. I have also used SSD's (generation 1 on) for the last year and a half in my own builds. Here's what I know: –

Alignment on SSD's is crucial to maintain performance.

Acronis 2010 can be used selectively on SSD's as a backup provided the full drive backup is restored to its original properly aligned location.

I believe that a backup of a fully aligned partition can be restored on to the original fully aligned partition provided no changes are made to that partition. (I have yet to personally confirm this and have only seen one post that confirms a successful restore).

I have realigned SSD-based partitions using a variety of methods including Paragon's fairly decent realignment program.

I have yet see a single post that shows a successful use of 2011 in restoring a backup (from either an SSD or spinner drive) to a brand-new SSD drive without going through the exercise of pre-partitioning a properly aligned partition. While Acronis's current documentation claims full SSD compatibility and highlights the limitations of prior versions, there is no clear-cut confirmation regarding alignment issues and no specific directions vis-à-vis SSD transfers and restores. As such, I am not prepared to risk my valuable backup data to a unconfirmed and undocumented process.

I would be pleasantly surprised and am eager, to see a post from an administrator/Acronis moderator that will confirm in detail the full capabilities and specific steps, of 2011 in restoring properly aligned partitions under most real-world conditions.

Sorry, I was in a time warp all of my own - my comments refer to TI 2010 and ABR10.

I believe 2011 should do this automatically. I didn't have an SSD at the time to test this, I now have, but as it's my main drive, I'm not about to test it on it.

Thank you Colin. I am in the same boat. Hopefully you won't need to test it till you are 100% sure it will work successfully.

So using TIH 2011 I have just upgraded to, can I now safely clone my 320GB win 7 64bits boot HD to my new 180 GB Ocz SSD? My boot disk drive only uses 90 GB, out of 320gb available

Do I need to buy Plus pack to do so?
Do I have to do anything special?

Is there any guide here at acronis site to do so? I think Many people like me would like the detailed guiide to help migrating to SSD

Sorry if i ask obvious things. Losing my boot drive and having to reinstall everythig is a terrible wats of time

Alejandro Valladares wrote:

So using TIH 2011 I have just upgraded to, can I now safely clone my 320GB win 7 64bits boot HD to my new 180 GB Ocz SSD? My boot disk drive only uses 90 GB, out of 320gb available

Do I need to buy Plus pack to do so?
Do I have to do anything special?

Is there any guide here at acronis site to do so? I think Many people like me would like the detailed guiide to help migrating to SSD

Sorry if i ask obvious things. Losing my boot drive and having to reinstall everythig is a terrible wats of time

Barring any direct and specific feedback, I would strongly suggest that you use Windows 7 to partition your SSD. This would ensure the proper offset/alignment. Then you could possibly use Acronis to copy/restore your boot drive to the SSD. Once you have successfully cloned your boot drive, make sure you check the alignment.
I'm eagerly awaiting a moderator response to your question.

Yes, I've just received my SSD drive.

I am waiting for a moderator response to confirm which is the best way to go: either using TIH2011 to clone the boot hard disk or going the hard way reinstalling windows 7 from MS - DVD.

Thx.

Alejandro Valladares wrote:

Yes, I've just received my SSD drive.

I am waiting for a moderator response to confirm which is the best way to go: either using TIH2011 to clone the boot hard disk or going the hard way reinstalling windows 7 from MS - DVD.

Thx.

Irrespective of the feedback from the moderators, I believe your best bet is to use Windows 7 or the Windows 7 install CD to partition your drive. You can stop the process once the partitioning is completed. At this point you will have a properly partitioned and aligned drive for cloning or reinstalling.

Best of luck and enjoy your SSD.

I've just tested this on a new SSD install. I'm running Win7-64 and the original system disc was a SATA WD740GD Raptor. I used TIH 2011 build 6574 and cloned the WD sys disc to a new OCZ Vertex 2 120GB SSD via a Thermaltake BlacX eSATA/USB docking station. This is how it went.

With Windows running, I put the raw SSD in the docking station and powered it on. I first initialized the SSD using Win7 storage manager, but didn't partition or format. I'm not sure if TIH would have found it otherwise, but I didn't try.

I then started up TIH and ran the clone utility. I selected the automatic clone option, and the SSD appeared in the clone destination dialogue. In all, setup was a breeze. The system rebooted into the Acronis routine, which then cloned the drive without incident. At the end, it prompted for a key press to shut down. After shutdown, I swapped the drives and restarted the system. After checking that the SSD appeared normal in the BIOS, I let windows boot. Windows loaded drivers for the new drive, and rebooted again. There were no issues whatsoever.

I then used msinfo32 to check alignment on the SSD. The offset of the first partition (hidden system) was divisible by 512 and hence aligned. I then UNinstalled PerfectDisk (my defrag app), and called up the native Win7 defrag routine. As is appropriate, the SSD did not appear in the defrag drive list. I set the older data drives to defrag as appropriate.

I then tested SSD I/O performance using an OCZ test routine (OCZwinsat2.bat), and the numbers were all good: 243 MB/s read, 235 MB/s write for large files. Smaller files knocked those values down to the 90's as expected.

I'm a happy camper. I'll report back if any issues arise.

eCo,
This type clone expanded all partitions proportionally so even the non-lettered drives were expanded. If you want to keep the special partitions the same size as original, the manual option would have given you the chance to choose which partitions were to be resized.

That idea occurred to me during the clone utility setup, but I was curious to see if TIH 2011 (that I knew was Win7 aware) would recognize and treat the hidden partition appropriately. Apparently it did because it's 100 MB on the SSD, and that's the exact same size it was on the Raptor. Just to be sure, I fired up the ThermalTake docking station I mentioned and loaded the Raptor to double check (this SATA docking station is my new best friend, btw).

I have to admit I was getting frustrated with some earlier versions of TIH, but it looks like Acronis is getting back on track with 2011. This process was completely painless, and I also no longer have those hair-pulling problems with credentials to my linux NAS.

Snakeyes wrote:

Alejandro Valladares wrote:

Yes, I've just received my SSD drive.

I am waiting for a moderator response to confirm which is the best way to go: either using TIH2011 to clone the boot hard disk or going the hard way reinstalling windows 7 from MS - DVD.

Thx.

Irrespective of the feedback from the moderators, I believe your best bet is to use Windows 7 or the Windows 7 install CD to partition your drive. You can stop the process once the partitioning is completed. At this point you will have a properly partitioned and aligned drive for cloning or reinstalling.

Best of luck and enjoy your SSD.

Snakeyes wrote:

Irrespective of the feedback from the moderators, I believe your best bet is to use Windows 7 or the Windows 7 install CD to partition your drive. You can stop the process once the partitioning is completed. At this point you will have a properly partitioned and aligned drive for cloning or reinstalling.

Best of luck and enjoy your SSD.

MY friend and I did that last weekend with his TI2010 and his new SSD drives. Re-partitioned the SSD with the W7 installation DVD and restored the image made before partitioning with TI2010. Checked the alignment with msinfo32 and it was fine. He had restored an image to the SSD previously with TI2010 but it was not aligned because it had been created with probably XP.

If you only have a single partition and the only operating system installed on the hard drive is Windows 7 and you clone to a single partition on an SSD, shouldn't the sectors be the right size and alignment be OK? Would TRIM straighten out any alignment issues?

First, there are TWO partitions that were created at Win-7 installation. The first is 100 MB hidden system partition. Alignment, was an unknown and a problem in the past with TIH 2010. I didn't know what to expect in this case, so I just cloned and checked. Perhaps I was lucky, but it's a data point nonetheless.

As for your second question, as I understand it TRIM doesn't have anything to do with formats. It's just a technique for keeping the SSD primed for new writes. I was able to verify that TRIM was enabled for the new SSD, but only time will tell whether or not the TRIM commands are getting through. If I see significant write performance degradation after a few weeks, then TRIM is prolly not working correctly. That's the risk one takes cloning to SSD, as opposed to a clean install. Of course, I don't get all this figured out until I'm up and running with it. lol

I have a similar problem. Please let me know if I should start a new thread.

I have just build a recovery media using WinPE 3.0 and TIH2011 6597 and plus pack. Offline backup and restore succeeded, but the offset of my SSD has changed to 32,256 bytes from the original 1MB offset. I have a single partition (no hidden partition) on that SSD with Win7x64, and the WinPE was built using a different 32 bit machine.

I've tried both full disk and partition restores. Even with delete and format partitions option, I cannot get TIH to recreate that 1MB offset.

I'd appreciate any help.

Jin,

Check this tool out as results might vary depending on your SSD

http://www.techpowerup.com/articles/other/157

I put your partition offset in the tool and it shows it is *not* aligned.

Alignment is correct, but OCZ does recommend a 1024KiB offset for optimal performance. I'm not sure why, but it may be due to the way the OS reads the drive in which case this would be true for all SSDs under Windows.

Jin, your partition setup is behaving like an XP installation for some reason. Are you sure it's WinPE *3.0*? You need to make sure TI thinks it's in a Win7 environment. Was that "32 bit" machine Win7?

See here: http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/forum/showthread.php?79857-THE-BASIC-…

Jin,
In order for a disk option restore to work, the source must be correct within the backup.

You indicate that you have only the one partition and it is also the active partition.

You might try restoring the single partition (checkmark C & do not check MBR/track0) and using the resize option option.

1. Expand the partition so there is no free space before or after the partition.
2. In the "free space before" window, change the GB to MB
3. In the "free space before window" type "1" (without quotes) into the size window.
4. Save the changes and complete the restore.

eCo wrote:

Alignment is correct, but OCZ does recommend a 1024KiB offset for optimal performance. I'm not sure why, but it may be due to the way the OS reads the drive in which case this would be true for all SSDs under Windows.

Jin, your partition setup is behaving like an XP installation for some reason. Are you sure it's WinPE *3.0*? You need to make sure TI thinks it's in a Win7 environment. Was that "32 bit" machine Win7?

See here: http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/forum/showthread.php?79857-THE-BASIC-…

I think you are misreading the OCZ recommendation. I believe that Pat L is exactly correct in his post. No disrespect meant.

Jin, Eco, I have updated my last post above. It turns out that 3 different requirements need to be fulfilled.

Wow! Nice to find that this forum is very active. Thanks to all.

Yes, I'm using WinPE 3.0 (downloaded KB3AIK_EN.iso) and built it on a Win7 x86 machine using the latest ATIH2011 revision. The partition I am restoring has Win7 x64 on it, and Win7 installer correctly offset it at 1MB.

I imaged the entire disk, and I would like it to restore the disk exactly with the same offset, whether or not any other offset is also acceptable.

I had already tried Grover's suggestion. Then I tried it again after wiping the SSD altogether. The resize option refuses to let me put in an arbitrary value like 1MB. Smallest allowed offset was 0.03MB, and the next up was ~7MB.

Very frustrating. Any other ideas? Are there workarounds?

Sometimes I found that I had to use the up/down arrow inside the "free space before" to walk the size into position either increasing or decreasing it until I got what I wanted. Sometimes I had to accept something wrong and immediately reedit the wrong setting to improve the size until I got what I wanted. Sometimes, it took several accept wrongs and reedit to make it right options. I am using XP Pro so your windows may react differently.

A "2" mb should give you a 4096 offset or at least it would in my testing.

Pat L wrote:

Jin, Eco, I have updated my last post above. It turns out that 3 different requirements need to be fulfilled.

lol...yeah, I just found that calculator myself. So it seems that ssd's (at least the recent batch) need the offset to be divisible by 4096, not 512, to be aligned. I misspoke earlier.

Jin, I'm not sure why it's not working for you, except that perhaps there's a bug in TI for single partition Win7 installations. If Grover's suggestion doesn't work, one thing that should work for sure is Paragon's non-destructive re-alignment tool.

http://www.paragon-software.com/technologies/components/partition-align…

It used to be free, but now it's $30. :/

As an fyi, here's some background why ssd's need to be aligned:
http://www.wwpi.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=8840:s…

I found a solution, which was to "clean" the drive and then create a primary partition using diskpart in WinPE3. 1MB offset was automatically set. Then I restored the imaged partition there using ATIH.

There was nothing I could do to make ATIH make the offset 1MB. It simply won't let me type it in or select with arrows, either during a restore or during "add a disk" operation. So, ATIH2011 does not correctly treat my OCZ SSD during a drive restore.

My remaining concern is whether to restore the MBR and track 0. What's stored there anyway?

You should be fine restoring the MBR and Track 0. You would probably be fine without it too since TI should write a standard MBR if one isn't aready on the drive.

Hi MudCrab. I've read so many of your posts! I'm honored.

What's in the MBR/Track0, and does it ever get changed? What do I lose by replacing it with a "standard" MBR? If it's not unique for a particular install, why do we even bother backing it up in the first place?

Thanks.

BTW, Acronis: ATIH isn't fully supporting my SSD.

The MBR contains the code for the first part of the booting process of the drive. In most cases, it is just telling the computer to find the Active partition and run the boot sector code. Track 0 is normally not used in a standard Windows setup. Other programs may use it (third-party boot managers, for example).

Replacing it by restoring the data from the backup just puts it back like it was on the original drive. There is normally no real "right" or "wrong" choice here. If the system boots correctly, then it's working.

Mark Wharton posted some information and links on this subject here, if you're interested.

---

Did you try Grover's suggestion of using a 2MB offset instead of 1MB? This usually works. I know you're not going to do it over. I'm just curious if you tried this and it failed.

Using DISKPART like you did is one of the best methods (in my opinion).

So, if I don't dual boot, Win7 won't ever modify the MBR? I know "ever" is a strong word, but I'm now curious what could modify the MBR. Sorry, I'm just wired like that.

Also, is the Disk Signature change when the MBR is recreated? I've "cleaned" the drive using Diskpart.

Yeah. I tried selecting 2MB offset. In fact, ATIH won't let me select anything between 0.03MB and ~7MB, even for an SSD with no existing partition.

BTW, I'm beginning to like WinPE more and more. It's good stuff.

There are two types of disk signature - if you are referring to the one in the boot record then that is fixed at 0xAA55 and appears in a defined place.

There is also a disk signature that Windows makes up for tracking a disk in registry which is a combination of the disk serial number and I think the date it was installed. I'd have to go and check the last part, and the second sentence was just for informational purposes.

There's something new to learn every day in the PC world. :)

So, how did my MBR get recreated after I "cleaned" the drive? I doubt partitioning using Diskpart did that. Does ATIH recreate the MBR when a boot partition is restored?

Also, I presume my disk serial number also got restored, considering I'm not asked to reactivate Windows. How did that get done?

Confusing...

Thanks.

Cleaning a drive with DISKPART does set the MBR code. This is why this method works for creating bootable flash drives or USB drives. The drive is prepared in one easy step.

If TI doesn't find a valid MBR on the drive, TI will place MBR code on the drive to allow the restored OS to boot. I don't know the internals so I don't know exactly what method TI uses. However, most of the time, it works correctly.

The disk serial number can't be restored. It is unique to each drive. The Disk Signature may have been restored or not. It really doesn't matter because TI fixes the links so Windows can boot. Replacing a drive does not always trigger a Windows reactivation.

Thank you. Now I understand why it worked.

Now, if I can only get ATIH to do it correctly in one step w/o having to resort to diskpart... that would be great. Maybe I should open a service ticket.

Is Acronis good with following through?

Now that you have it on the SSD, I would create a new backup and see if it restores properly. In some cases, it's only the first time getting it onto the drive that's difficult.

Actually, I was trying to image from and restore to the very same SSD, which is why I was surprised to find that ATIH would not correctly restore.

I'm new to ATIH, and I just wanted to make sure I have a viable backup image. Images seem fine. It's the restore that's misbehaving.

What's your favorite imaging (for backing up) tool, MudCrab? ATIH?

So, restoring back into the same partition isn't even working? If it worked when you used DISKPART to create the partition and TI to restore into it, it should work now. What's changing?

My favorite imaging app is the one that works correctly for what I need it to do. None of them are perfect. I'm not going to list names here.

It's the drive restoration that messes up the offset. I wished to image the whole drive for backup and be able to just restore the whole drive w/ the correct offset and all.

Restoring a partition image to an existing partition has always worked fine for me, of course.

Usually, it's the partition restore that causes a problem, not doing an Entire Disk Image restore. Does the offset problem happen only when restoring from WinPE or does it also happen from the Linux version?

Does it make any difference if the SSD drive is cleaned first and has no existing partitions before you try the restore?

Do you restore the disk image often enough that it matters if you need to clean the drive and create the partition using DISKPART first? I would think you would end up with the desired results and you could restore the MBR & Track 0/Disk Signature, if desired. Most times it's not necessary to restore the entire drive.

I wonder if it's just this particular SSD or if TI is now doing something different.

I also expected the disk restore to be more faithful than partition restore, but that's not the case for me. I wanted to be able to restore the disk in one step not because of convenience, but because I didn't really understand what would happen if I recreated the MBR and restored only the boot partition. Now I'm less concerned, thanks to you.

I never could get the Linux media or BartPE to produce an image that passes the validation step, so I never tried restoring with those. I'm not sure why, although I suspected driver compatibility.

I had also tried cleaning the SSD first and then restoring entire disk with ATIH, but that produced the same result. Whenever ATIH has an opportunity to redefine the partition, it would mess up the offset.

I had enough fun researching all these imaging options. I miss the day when I used to be able to just trust Ghost (2003, btw) to protect me. I might actually go back to it. I mainly "upgraded" to ATIH so that I wouldn't have to hassle with manual tinkering (with uncertain long-term consequences).

I'm not sure why I seem to be a loner with this problem. I do have a relatively new SSD, but Sandforce SSDs are selling well these days. Perhaps it has to do with the fact that I deprived Win7 of the hidden partition, although that's a far fetch.

Jin,

I have an OCZ Vertex2 SandForce SSD, but my Windows 7 system has the hidden system reserved partition that you have not, from what I understand. I have imaged this disk daily from Windows and restored it (always from the recovery CD) 5 times already, and my SSD is still aligned.

You will find my info32 data attached.

Maybe you can recreate my partition layout on your disk (with a dummy, empty and hidden "system reserved" partition), and then image the entire disk to see if a restore would work better then.

That's very kind of you. Thank you.

When I setup my Vertex2, I "initialized" it under Win7 before cloning from the original system drive. This initialization process seems to be distinct from partitioning and formatting, but I couldn't find out exactly what it is using Google or Wiki. I'm wondering if that had something to do with my offset and alignment since mine was set up perfectly.

I just bought True Image 11 with PlusPack ( having purchased 8 , 9 and 10 - what a lot of dollars!) and now
I have spent 2 days attempting to CLONE my WD Velociraptor drive to a new Vertex 2 SSD.

I have read a multitude of posts and my expectation of a 'simple' operation is not experienced.

I have tried many operations including new backups with TI 11.

I ran Diskpart - but a Restore overwrites the partition and restore fails with a notification area pop-up 2 secs after the Operation Started popup.

Clone also overwrites and fails after 2 sec in the same way.

I have tried restoring just the C: drive ( I have D: and P:)- I have also tried Spotmau to clone to SSD - nothing works for me. I have a very complex WIN 7 64 installation and the prospect of a clean install is a few months work even if I can remember all of the 'tweaks' I have used over the last year.

Has anybody any good things to say about TI 11 and PlusPack which offers to restore to 'unlike' hardware.

You don't need the plus pack to move from your WD to your SSD is it is the same computer.
Try this:
- run chkdsk /f /r on all the partitions of your WD,
- do a screen capture of your disk management console and print it for reference,
- create an all-partition disk and partition backup of your WD to a USB disk from the Acronis Recovery CD, validate your backup,
- remove your WD disk, put the SSD at the same spot,
- boot on the Acronis recovery CD and restore your partitions one by one, making sure the first partition will be restored with a 1MB offset,
- make sure that you make primary active the one that is currently active (probably system reserved)
- do not resize any hidden partition or recovery partition you might have,
- resize the C:\paritition to fill out your new disk (you don't need to reboot between each partition restore),
- at the end, restore the MBR+track0 and the disk signature.

That should work.

Hi Pat,

Thanks for your operations list - those were the things I was doing and expected it to work.

I did them again today and still no success. I did just do my C: partition.

I've made up a quick web page so that you can see what I got.
http://beesoft.soho.on.net/SSD/index.htm

Do you or anyone else have any comments.

Thanks
Bryan

It looks like you are doing the right things.

Are you recovering from the network? If yes, I would try from a local image. If you have to copy the image to a USB disk, validate it after the copy.

Bryan,

Could you clarify, have you purchased TIH 2011 and PP or the much older and 'obsolete' TIH 11 and PP?

What build are you using?

This is from my Registered Products page on Acronis.com.au
Licenses for
Acronis True Image Home 2011 Upgrade (English) 1 license(s)
Acronis True Image 2010 Home (English) 1 license(s)
Acronis True Image 2009 Home Upgrade (English) 1 license(s)
Acronis True Image 8.0 Personal (English) 2 license(s)

The operation didn't work on 2010 Home so I purchased the upgrade on Friday 27th May 2011

The 2011 Upgrade was delivered as Acronis APAC - #23044529 and included the Plus Pack.

Bryan