HDD --> SSD Clone Image Partition Alignment

How much of a risk would I be at having this unaligned partition problem if I want to use a Acronis backup I made of my current disk image to copy over to my new SSD when it comes in the next few days?

A fresh install is sort of pointless for me since this is my backup I made just after a fresh install after I got all my programs, codecs, fonts, photoshop brushes and settings in place. It will save me TONS of time to use this.

I was also thinking about just using this guide for gparted since I have that on my flash drive.

http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/f...-gt-SSD-*with-alignment*-quickly-with-GParted

 

Unless you're using the very latest Acronis (and even then it's not 100% reliable, from what I've read) and also cloning/restoring to the exact same HDD/SSD, then you'll have a 100% chance that the SSD will be unaligned.

GParted? You're on your own there.

Do a fresh install on your fresh SSD and hopefully, this will be the last time on this media you should have to worry about it.

Again, if you made an Acronis backup from this fresh SSD install, when you re-image it, it 'should' keep the alignment correct for you for the next time (although, I still wouldn't trust it and it takes me a week - between jobs - to setup a new system fully).

Good luck.

 

shrink your current partition to less than the new SSD size, remove all partitions affect it then use windows 7 image backup and restore. It would preseve the alignment.

 

Acronis v13 and up cover it usually.

I'd just try it and then benchmark it. The numbers will show it.

 

What do you risk by trying it?

If it works you have done all your work in 30 minutes of unattended operation.

If it doesn't than you need to do it as a fresh install.

I will try it this weekend (my new W520 and SSD got in today) and let you know.

Sorry to repeat myself but this is how I upgraded from an 80GB HDD to a 320 GB HDD on my T61 15 months ago. I see no reason that it won't work from a HDD to an SSD. However I am not a techie. But we shall see.

Perry

 

No reason to not work. Just won't work optimally.

Alignment guaranteed to be off (affecting performance).

Windows won't set itself up optimally for the SSD (it will be based on HDD parameters - and, affect performance over the long term).

You will do double the writes for no reason (you'll be doing a clean install soon enough).

Unless, of course, you're $$$ buying an SSD to get below par performance.

 

I know you bought an Intel and a Corsair. For the Intel there is a free drive copy program from Intel that will maintain alignment.

For Corsair, I dunno. See if Corsair has a similar app. Best to go with fresh install though.

 

got both drives today. decided to go with the c300 in the laptop and the intel in the desktop.

reason is I keep less stuff on the laptop c: than I do my desktop and I never turn off my desktop but boot my laptop daily so it should have the faster drive.

I have a problem, I took the 2nd drive out of my g73 and put the ssd in and it is not seen in window at all, not even the drive manager. I then checked bios and its not there.

thinking I had a dud ssd, i put it in slot one and then i see it in bios. I have taken out the ssd and put it back in slot 2 and reseated it several times and it wont show up. I wonder now if my slot 2 got damaged or glitched. I'll have to find the time later to put the original 500gb drive back into the computer and see if that fixes it.

I plan to clone the laptop only since it has a lite 50gb C: that is fairly new. For the desktop I plan to do a clean install since I have like 500gb of games and other stuff on there that I will have to trim down for the intel.

 

I would do clean installs on both, should be fast installs with the ssds regardless, i personally dont trust image hdd with ssds, chance of not bieng alinged.... not worth it.

Good luck with your ssds, now there no turning back , you will be adicted to ssds.

 

Acronis V13 and up take care of alignment properly.

 

What is v13 ? I usually see they name it as 'home 2010'/'home 2011' etc.

 

By searching on Google it seems that 2010 = v13.

As far as I know 'Home' is good enough.

 

There are very conflicting messages concerning home 2010 and alignment. Some said it is off, some said it is ok. I believe it depends on how you do it.

If you do the full disk sector to sector copy style(not sure what is the latest term for it, cloning or imaging), it would work. But that has the limitation that it can go from smaller to equal or larger size drive.

If you just back one partition and put it on to the new drive, people said the alignment would be off. I have no first hand experience with 2010, only 2009 and it did have the alignment wrong.

 

Yes you need to use the 'cloning' option.

 

I have 2011 its newer than 2010

 

Hmm ok so figured out my connection is good on my second drive the C300 does show up, but only if i change the bios to IDE mode. If I put it back in AHCI the C300 vanishes.

However in slot one as the primary drive the C300 will show up fine.

So I do not know whats up, guess its a bios issue with my laptop,

I assume I can change drive boot order and just swap the drives around.

 

2011 works great. I've stuck SSDs in a Toshiba netbook, DV7t, and a T61 with it. Just make sure you have 3 partitions or less on C, use the default Acronis imaging (no sector x sector, no cloning) and in my limited experience at least alignment ended up correct.

 

It ended up correct, worked fine with a clone. It cloned the hidden backup partition too though I had no option to not have it copy and I did not want to take it off the HDD.

Its ok though I just deleted it after the fact and gave my SSD a 2nd small partition to keep stuff away from the OS partition.

 

I just picked up a 160gb Intel g2 for my (technically, the wife's) Inspiron Duo. This will be replacing the 320gb internal HDD. I am able to use Acronis 2011 to transfer the current Windows install. Would the proper procedure be to use either Disk Management or a Linux LiveCD to shrink the Windows partition to ~160gb (or less if I go the overprovisioning route), then use Acronis in some form to either directly clone the drive to the SSD, or else through the use of an external HDD, back it up first and then restore it to the SSD?

Once the copying is complete, how do I verify the alignment?

 

I just cloned directly from 500gb to the new SSD it will shrink the partition in the process and make sure all things are copied (like hidden boot stuff)

To verify alignment I used a program that you run via command prompt to see the starting sector of the partition. Just google "check ssd alignment" or something similar and you should find what you need to know.

 

Ah, thanks. Now I just have to wait for the SSD to get here...

 

Has anyone tried Paragon Hard Disk Manager Suite 2011? It is advertised to have "Migrate OS to SSD" and "Automatic partition alignment".

I've had my Dell XPS15 (L502x) and a 120GB Intel 320 for over a week now trying to figure out what's the best way to get Win 7 Pro x64 running on the SSD. I think I'll most likely end up doing a fresh install with the instructions here as I'm not sure (i) spending $50 on a software which I'll likely only use once is a wise choice; and (ii) I've read that apparently Win 7 performs some optimization for SSD during a fresh installation.

 

I have an SSD on the way and as much as I would like to take a short cut and use some kind of migration software, I will probably just go the long route. After all, one can make haste with less speed just as one can travel slowly and arrive at their destination quickly.

 

A wise move

 

Check the alignment after you image the SSD, if it works then you saved yourself time, if it doesn't then you didn't waste much. I got it to work when I moved the wife's Windows install on her tablet from a HDD to SSD.

 

After my Crucial M4 SSD arrived, I was very tempted to image the HDD and just write it to the new SSD but I resisted. At least after a new install you are 100% certain it will be working to its maximum potential. Due to it being an SSD, all new installs obviously take a fraction of the time too so everything will be done in no time.

I have to say, now I understand why people say they will never use a standard HDD again after going SSD. There really is no going back now, damn

 

I bought acronis home 2011 and JUST cloned my new m18x hdd to my m4 256gb ssd. There are a few align programs out there and they say I'm not aligned?

Everything works though? seems fast.

 

Nigel I did the same thing with Acronis 2011 and ended up with a misaligned SSD. Ended up using Paragon Alignment tool to realign. Next time I'll be smarter about it and do a clean install.

 

As I build a new Desktop and check its drive, I notice that both of my WD HDDs are not aligned. So I presume that would result in a cloned SSD that is misaligned. In that case I will not clone them over. However if AS SSD reports that your HDD is aligned than you can safely clone it over to the new SSD in a short few moments.

 

An Acronis TI 11 image (not a clone) backup to an external USB HDD and recover to your new installed SSD will align correctly.

 

That is in process. I used Diskpart to repartition the HDD that is new and misaligned. I am doing a backup to it from the other WD misaligned Sata 3 HDD and will than recover to the now fixed WD older HDD.

My C300 I will do a fresh install to.

 

Here is my experience, and what I have learned.

I used Paragon Hard Disk manager to clone one SSD to another SSD. The source SSD was aligned properly and the clone also came out aligned properly.

I used Acronis True Image 2011 to do the same above procedure and it came out misaligned.

From what I have read Acronis can clone with the proper alignment if you don't do a straight clone, but first use the backup feature of Acronis and then restore that image to a properly aligned and formatted SSD. However, it didn't work for me. Perhaps I need an Acronis update, or some other factor was affecting it.

Paragon Partition Alignment tool is supposed to be able to do an alignment without losing your data(I would definitely back up your data first). You can get a time limited version of the alignment tool for 9.95. I have the full version and haven't actually performed an alignment, but the tool did accurately recognize that all my drivers were already aligned and didn't need to do anything. Just to be clear you run the alignment tool after you have cloned the drive, or after you have installed windows if your drive is not aligned, like in Windows XP or Vista.

 

Forget cloning with Acronis TI 11. They don't claim that works, they say image backup/recovery works and my limited experience (3 different lappys, 3 different sized brand new out of the box Intel x25 G2s) agrees.

 

Just an FYI for those considering Paragon Partition Alignment (PPA): I cloned my HDD to an SSD using Acronis and ended up with misaligned SSD with Dell recovery partition and the OS (main) partition. PPA correctly detected both partitions to be misaligned but could only fixed the Dell recovery partition (probably because it was the first partition on the disk?) Anyways, I realigned the disk using Gparted which worked great and preserved all data (only had to do a Windows startup repair after that to be back in business). So be warned that PPA *may* not be able to fix the partitions beyond the first partition (don't want to generalize my isolated experience, but just be warned).

 

I have used Acronis TIH to successfully clone HDD or SSDs to SSD 4 or 5 times.

Each time I made certain (using AS SSD) that the HDD was aligned first and I was also using Win 7 which apparently is relatively alignment friendly. I did, however, heed a recommendation that I got from the Acronis forum to clone from out to in. In other words, take the HDD and put it in the external enclosure or in the Optical Drive caddy and the target drive in the main drive slot. (Slot 0 in a desktop). I have no idea if that is significant but so far it has worked for me.

I recently built a desktop that for whatever reason ended up with 2 HDDs with an OS on them that I wanted on an SSD. They reported misaligned (red and the word BAD is a big clue) in AS SSD. On these I did an Acronis backup and recover to the new drive that had been aligned with diskpart properly after a Clean ALL diskpart command to clean the NAND chips. Again it worked well.

So with a little care and a number of methods (Clone, Backup and Restore, or Clean Install) you will get your drive working and properly aligned.

 

Good to know. Like I posted I was unable to get Acronis TI 11 to work properly even when restoring from an image. From your post I see that it could have worked, but I must have done something differently.

Hmmm. I noticed the post above this said it works when the source drive is external and the target drive internal.
Is that how you did it?

 

In my experience Acronis works 100% if you use the Clone full disk Tool, automatic, with the original hard drive in an enclosure, the new SSD in the laptop.

I've done it about 10 times, never had a problem.

 

Thanks for the tip Phil. I did the opposite the SSD in the external so will do it your way the next time.

 

Great to know!

I am going to give that a try to see if it works for me.

 

PS. of course this method only works if original hard drive is properly aligned. This can be checked with AS-SSD.

 

Yeah, that's kinda the point I've been beating around the bush about. Doing a regular old TIH 11 Backup/Recovery image you don't have to worry about that or the size of your image so long as it will fit on the new already mounted in your computer SSD. Just slap it on there and you're good to go.

 

I've read some reports that doing images doesn't always work. I'm not sure if it's true. Cloning a full disk (using the method described earlier) always works in my experience.

 

Yeah, who knows Phil. I am more lazy guy than expert and I already had TIH 11 Backup images anyway. Acronis says TIH 11 has FULL SSD support so I figured I'd give it a go and my alignment came out correct the whole 3 times I've done it.
Haha, maybe I just got lucky.