How to restore unaligned XP system disk to an aligned SSD with TI 2011?
Is there an approved method for accomplishing this? I tried Ilya's method of aligning the SSD, then restoring just MBR and Track 0, then restoring all the files and folders to the SSD. This does seem to preserve the SSD's alignment, but the result won't boot! Mine is a Gigabyte X58A-UD3R board, i7-950 and 12 GB G-Skill trio (ramdisk). I reordered HDD priority to the SDD. Nada. Zilch. C: drive is my Raptor system drive. An external SATA drive contains my .tib file. Must I first remove the source Raptor (C:) from the computer, or is my hope for the perfect clone truly impossible? (Needless to say, the Raptor still appears as C: in explorer.)
tj
John, I am looking at my Acronis box in the process of replying to you. Maybe this is the answer: My box in fact is labeled:
"Acronis True Image 11 Home." It is NOT labeled "Acronis True Image 2011 Home." The caption to my plea for help is awry because of my brain being shuttled from all the internet "help" threads. In my defense, I must say this is a tad deceptive.
Is there a material difference between the two such that 2011 is good whereas 11 is a dog?
I would spring for a 2011 Home if you are pretty certain this will restore an XP image to a previously correctly-aligned SDD without messing up the proper alignment. To be clear, I begin with an image of my unaligned XP sys-disk. Then, I deleted the partition on the SSD in XP Disk Manager, employ Diskpar to align and create a partition on a 2048 sector boundary, quick format the result in Disk Manager as directed, and then to restore the .tib file to the SSD. Either the results won't boot, hang the computer or knock out the alignment.
Do you think 2011 Home will work as hoped on an XP .tib file?
tj
I don't know TI 11 but I think it is history. What is sure that with version 2011 Acronis enabled aligned restore. I don't have an SSD but I need it for RAID. And all I can tell it worked for me. I restored several unaligned partition backups (one of them XP and two Win7) and they were aligned afterwards. Perhaps you can download a trial version and check it out for your system setup.
But for now you might have to rebuild the MBR so that the system starts from the new partition and set it active and the old one to not active. Also you have to change the boot order in the BIOS to the SSD. And look for a driver that can do TRIM on your SSD. And never use the partition tools of WinXP on your SSD. Acronis Disk Director 11 Home did a good job. But I just used it with Win 7 and it might have used Win 7 routines.
I am afraid they want to confuse the customers with the numbering 2011 and 11. No idea what the marketing department at Acronis thinks... But at least their approach is unique :-(((((
As of next year the confusing change in TIH naming will cease, assuming there is a 2012 and that the same naming convention is adhered to, as there never was a v12 marketed, this was known as TI 2009.
If the OP is running TI 11 then most likely he is running XP or Vista as TI 11 won't install or work properly on W7.
TI 11 cannot align partitions to 4K boundaries.
Can you confirm which OS you are using and what if any boot error messages you get.
Colin,
Indeed I am using XP SP-2. I was about to acquire TI2011 at Newegg for giggles, but it is said to be only for SP-3 and newer.
That's a non-starter for me, because SP-3 might break something. If it ain't broke, don't fix it... blah, blah.
However, I am now blaming my X58A-UD3R 2.0 board or its Award 6.0 BIOS. I deleted the partition on my SSD, then align a new one to 64, 128, 1024 and 2048 sectors (tried 'em all), go back to Disk Manager and quick format (default and 4096 blocks, tried both), Acronis Home 11 and Snapshot will both restore images while retaining alignment!! Problem is that neither will subsequently boot.
Now feed on this: I cannot install XP on a virgin SSD if I first align its partition with Diskpar. (After the files copy over and I do the F6 for AHCI drivers, the install disk itself will not reboot! Furthermore, Paragon Drive Align 2.0 cannot align an unaligned XP once successfully installed... even if it not used as the system disk, "C". It sees the ssd misalignment, reboots after the ssd is selected, gronks and grinds for a minute, then returns with the bald announcement that the disk is Not Aligned."
With all the above in the mix, I sure wish some guru has a suggestion. A BIOS setting, perhaps? I just posted a request for help to the Gigabyte site, but they may not want to admit anyone else has contacted them with this problem. "My board? Heavens, No!" 8-)
tj
Thomas,
Just for giggles I purchased Drive Align, and it refuses to align my SSD as well. XP itself won't be 1024 or 2048 savvy, it was designed to only understand 63 byte offsets. What many (all?) SSD's do here is have a translation layer which converts the SSD's 4K sectors to 512 bytes for OS's like XP to understand.
To be honest, I don't know what the answer is at this stage.
Colin,
You have have hit on something! You don't suppose the swine hardcoded 63 into XP itself, do you? 8-)
But this doesn't explain all the "stickys" over on the OCZ forums where all but myself were successful. 8-)
Meanwhile, I'll remain in unaligned (but still fast as heck) state until I get a copy of W7.
Then I'll try the eryder trick mentioned in this forum. It would seem to jibe with the John Montor suggestion, supra!
(Effectively, an automatic "rebuild" of the MBR by installing XP on 7's "D" partition).
tj
Thomas,
Just for giggles I purchased Drive Align, and it refuses to align my SSD as well. XP itself won't be 1024 or 2048 savvy, it was designed to only understand 63 byte offsets. What many (all?) SSD's do here is have a translation layer which converts the SSD's 4K sectors to 512 bytes for OS's like XP to understand.
To be honest, I don't know what the answer is at this stage.
I was able to use Paragon Alignment Tool to repair the alignment on two of my non-SSD drives, but for some reason PAT refused to align my SSD.
I used a LINUX partitioning tool and guide to move my OS partition over a few megs, then move it back. This fixed the alignment issue on the SSD. It was relatively painless and took only a few minutes after I got the tool and burnt it to a bootable CD.
Nothing that Acronis has out right now will repair the alignment issue. I even reinstalled Windows 7 from scratch, checked the alignment, and it showed as good. I then took an image of my previous OS partition, and imaged it back to the exact same drive letter. It would boot, but there were all kinds of issues, not a good thing to do.
For Acronis images, cloning the SSD drive to a normal drive and back again is supposed to re-align correctly, though I haven't tried it yet.
For Acronis images, cloning the SSD drive to a normal drive and back again is supposed to re-align correctly, though I haven't tried it yet.
As long as it is aligned, Acronis will restore it back as aligned. Non-SSD drives should be aligned, and will be if Windows 7 is allowed to create the partition on a new install.
If you image a non-aligned SSD OS to a non-SSD drive you will get a non-aligned non-SSD drive, and the same goes if you try to reverse the process.
The only way I have been able to correct a non-aligned SSD was to use a LINUX drive partitioner on a bootable CD, move the partition and then move it back. This placed a hidden 1meg partition at the front of the drive.
Trying to do this With ANY partitioning tool made by Acronis will fail.
I restored my WIn 7 64bit (from HDD) to my SSD.
The backup was NOT aligned initialy (I checked the drive to make sure).
When restoring (Using 2011) I switched to Partition mode,
Restored MBR
Clicked on Partition properties
This opens another window
Choose Unallocated space BEFORE partition of 1024 (I think that is correct)
This restored to a smaller drive and the restored partiton had correct alignment for the SSD
Marty,
Placing a spacer in the "free space before" will change the starting sector and may be controlable. In my testing, I have found that a free space before of "1 mb" will produce a starting sector of 2048; and a setting of "2 MB" will produce a starting sector of 4096.
These settings can be applied when cloning (using manual method) or when using the restore method of resizing each partition.
Click image to enlarge viewing.
Partition Restore with Resize:
Cloning using the manual mode:
Hi Grover,
I'm using ATI 2011 but I can't find the steps you've shown.
Can you explain to me how to get there?
Thanks a lot.
Matt,
What is it you are wanting to do? Clone or restore?
Which Windows operating system?
Would you consider posting a picture of your Windows Disk Management graphical view?
I'd like to restore an image of my current SSD (not aligned) to a new SSD and making it correctly aligned in the process.
I'm using 7 64 bit ultimate.
To fix your alignment issues go here, and follow the directions.
To test your alignment before and after, use this.
After installing Argus Monitor left-click the 'HD S.M.A.R.T.' button, pick the SSD drive from the pulldown on the right, left-click the 'Extended' button on the bottom right, left click 'Disk Information', scroll all the way to the very bottom and if the alignment is correct it will look like the below:
If the alignment is off then it should look like the below:
Hope this helps...
Note. All drives; SSD and non-SSD drives should be in alignment. I'm not sure how critical it is to have non-SSD drives in alignment. Argus Monitor will display the alignment of all drives.
Michael,
thanks you very much!
Here are a couple guides which may help. These are work in progress.
These guides illustrate how to move from a smaller to a larger drive via the 2010-2011 TrueImage "Partition Restore using Resize"
Look at your Windows Disk Management Graphical view.
If the first partition shown is the active partition,
Use this first guide.
If the active partition is the second partition, Use this last guide.
Cloning (manual option) to a larger drive Use this cloning guide.
Guess what? Acronis MAKES an alignment tool, for at least a few drive manufacturers: Samsung, Western Digital included. After reading and participating in countless posts and issues about alignment here in the forums, and use of a Paragon's tool (which I have used myself,) I found it almost shocking last night when, in process of dealing with sector errors on a brand new Samsung drive, that I found Acronis DOES have an alignment tool for FREE, at least for the owners of drives made by certain manufacturers. I wonder why the Acronis moderators and staff on this forum never seem to have mentioned it.
Admittedly, the alignment tools are in preparation (and current use) for the "new" 4k sector drives that are about to become standard next year, and the drive manufacturers need to have tools to help consumers who have non-4k friendly operating systems (or cloning methods that don't retain alignment,) and thus Acronis has arrangements with some manufacturers. The irony is that these tools could help those here who are trying to verify, ensure, or create correct alignments for SSD drives.
WDC info on tool:
wdc.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/wdc.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php
Samsung "samsung_align_tool" (is again, made by Acronis,)
www.samsung.com/global/business/hdd/support/downloads/support_in_aft.html
And lastly, my own technique that has worked each time to get a non-aligned XP partition aligned correctly is use a Windows 7 computer to create a partition on the target drive (which can be connected via USB externally in an enclosure) - that will create an aligned partition. Then use ATI or ABR to restore the XP partition image to the new partition. I have found using ABR 10 that I can allow it to resize the partition to match whatever the new size is, and it will restore with correct alignment. Good luck!
Hi Howard,
thanks for the info!
It's a shame Acronis makes an alignment tool that's not available to all users!
Hi writers at this part of the forum,
actual I'm in the situation to supply an SSD (correctly) to my computer.
All the HD's in this are samsung types and I knew the free tools of Samsung and WD, also the one from Paragon. I don't want to buy PAT for preparing my new SSD (OCZ Agility 120G) til I'm sure that it works correct.
All the tips in this forum are very helpfull to apply my SSD, but like Howard and Matt I wonder about Acronis that they don't find a possibility to make their tool available for users of their products.
As Acronis user since many years I spend lots of money for this programs, but now I will think about this.
Bernhard