New
#1
Align partition containing Windows 7 system = huge headache
Hey folks,
I recently got a 60GB SSD to install into my PC and migrate my Windows 7 partition on the harddisk to it. But the partition needs to be aligned first.
Here's the catch.
I realize that I could clone the system to my SSD first and then use an alignment tool. However, I want my system to be fully encrypted with TrueCrypt, and from what I understand, if I encrypt it in-place on the SSD, some blocks containing unencrypted data may still remain due to the way SSD block allocation and wear leveling works.
For this reason, I want to encrypt my partition on the HD before cloning it to the SSD.
For now my system is unencrypted, since I need to align it first - an encrypted partition is impossible to move for obvious reasons.
I just can't seem to do it. I've tried imaging the system, creating a new partition on my HD with an aligned offset and restoring the image to it - the alignment was lost and the offset changed to an odd number.
I tried using Macrium's RoboRestore tool which works with Microsoft's robocopy command - it writes files from an existing image to a new, formatted partition and then makes the partition bootable. For reasons I can't figure out, RoboRestore simply doesn't work.
The newly created system fails to boot and BSOD's with a Session Manager Initialization Error and the error code 0xc0000034. Attempts at startup repair have no effect.
Then I tried a freely available alignment tool from Hitachi - it simply claimed no alignment was necessary and offered no option to go ahead anyway. Makes sense, since I was trying to align a HD and not an SSD.
So, I'm stuck...what can I do from here? Again, my goal is to have the system partition aligned, then encrypted, before I clone it to my SSD.
It shouldn't be so hard, should it?