Show us your SSD performance

whs said:

1. Each partition should be imaged seperately and restored seperately. I am not sure whether Acronis can "shrink" an image (free Macrium cannot do that), but to be safe, you should shrink the partitions to an equal or smaller size than the receiving partition on the SSD.

2. I would put only the OS and the system reserved 100MB active partition on the SSD. The user data I would leave on the spinners. The D partition which contains some of your program files could go on the SSD too. But I would put the prigram files back onto C before you image and get rid of that extra program file partition - it is not worth the trouble for 5GBs.

3. Format and align the first partitions on the SSD (probably the 100MB active primary partition) with Command Prompt first as shown in the tutorial. The rest of the unallocated space you can then partition with Disk Management (or Partition Wizard if you prefer). If the first partition is properly aligned, the rest will follow the alignment.

I want to thank you but I am going to try it my way first.
Reason is I have this system setup exactly as I want it. OS, programs, everything.
Problem in trying it the way you suggest is I will end up doing a reinstall. And I'm not going through that again.
I do not know of any imaging program that can reimage a drive one partition at a time and have the system boot. Tried that the other day as a test. Once I was done trying to image the C drive & sys reserve with the MBR the system just hung at boot. The only way to restore a OS drive is to do the whole drive at once. Otherwise it does not work.
Acronis TI can & can not shrink a image. It can put part of a image, a secondary/last partition, on the remaining space of a drive after it create the main/first partition and any other partitions, if more then 2, at the same size as what the image was created from. That is if there is enough space left on the drive to hold whatever data is in that last partition.
When I look at my current setup using a partitions program and Disk Management and my current drive seems to be aligned properly.

I will follow your advice about first aligning and formatting the 100MB partition. But once I start the reimaging that partition will get wiped and remade by the image program. That's just the way it is. I don't know of any imaging program that can load a image on a drive without first wiping and recreating the partitions. Yes they can copy files to a already existing partition but that won't do if you actually want the OS to BOOT.

Here is the output from Diskpart on my OS drive

DISKPART> list partition

Partition ### Type Size Offset
------------- ---------------- ------- -------
Partition 1 Primary 100 MB 1024 KB
Partition 2 Primary 82 GB 101 MB
Partition 3 Primary 149 GB 83 GB

I would think that the image created from this disk and then load on the SSD would put everything back the same. Which is the way you say to align the drive in your tutorial.

Right/Wrong?

Does the Offset for the second and third partitions matter?

whs said:

1. Is that diskpart is from your spinning disk ?

2. You have to align the SSD first, the imaging program will not do that for you, unless you use this one: Paragon Migrate OS to SSD - System migration to Solid State Drives (SSD) - Overview

3. Partition 2 and 3 are OK in terms of alignment

Yes that is from the spinner.

But if this drives layout, the spinner, is aligned properly now the image I just created should has the same alignment when placed on the SSD.

No?

Maybe I'm missing something. The image I am currently using on my current spinner was made from another drive that I replaced. If the original drive had the 1024KB alignment and that image copied that alignment over to this newer drive why wouldn't it do the same when loading it on the SSD?
I will first boot the system from a Mustang PE disk with TI 2011 and Disk Director and make that 100MB partition. I'll also check that the Mustang PE disk has diskpart on it to check the alignment before and after the imaging.

I'll check out that link. Thanks.

Oh here is the partition alignment after I resized the C partition.

DISKPART> list partition

Partition ### Type Size Offset
------------- ---------------- ------- -------
Partition 1 Primary 100 MB 1024 KB
Partition 2 Primary 60 GB 101 MB
Partition 3 Primary 171 GB 61 GB

@ whs

I'm a little confused and actually think his partition is aligned. This is why....

If we look at Diskpart......

It shows the 100MB partition as 1024, it also shows the main partion "C" drive as 101



Now If we than use Partition Alignment Tool from Paragon to "align" the "C" the program will tell you the drive is already aligned!



SIW2 asked this question......

SIW2 said:

I dunno about lucky, whs.

MS deliberately set Vista alignment that way.

Unless you want to shell out for PAT ( works very well, btw ), you could try this:

Image your main partition with macrium/paragon.

Delete the main partition with diskpart from 7 dvd.

Create new main partition with alignment you want - still using Diskpart.

Restore the image you made to that new partition.

See if the alignment is retained - I expect it will be.

Before you do that- you need to ask:

If 1024 is divisible by 4, is 101 x 1024 also divisible by 4 ?

Post: SSD Alignment

I think he might have a point..... at least PAT thinks so.

I also note that AS SSD Benchmark tool shows the the partition is OK (Aligned)



Bottom line is everything showing "C" drive with an offset of 101 is aligned.

What am I missing?

Thanks

Thank you sygnus21.

I really think people are making this harder then it is.
Most if not all imaging programs are designed to place the image on another drive exactly as it was on the drive it was created from.

If your present drive is properly aligned and the image you create from it is good then when loading that image on ANY other drive it should be placed in the exact same location on disk.

Just checked my Mustang PE disk and it does have Diskpart on it. Did all the checks one more time and everything is aligned as the tutorial stated. 1024KB for the start of the 100MB partition and 101 for the 60GB partition and 61GB for the last partition.

I know for a fact that Acronis TI, since version 9, will create partitions at the exact same place as where they were.

I'm going to do a little test. I have a 160GB drive I'm goning to load this newest image on. With the C partition resized to 60GB and the D partition now at somewhere around 170++.
TI should create the 100MB partition at the front of the drive with the alignment of 1024KB, the C partition of 60GB and then place all the data from the D partition on whatever is left. I'll soon find out.

@ Shootist....

Well I know there was a great deal of talk about ATI 2011 being the only backup that truly did alignments, but I suspect that if the image is aligned to begin with, then theoretically it should be aligned when restored. I say theoretically because that's been a big debate about whether ATI of earlier does in fact restore the image aligned. http://kb.acronis.com/content/2699

Anyway I'm no expert and haven't done the experiment to see if this is in fact the case. I suppose I could since I actually have ATI 2010 but....

As for my question to whs, I'm not challenging his knowledge per se as he's helped me understand some things, and has a better grasp on hard drive performance/alignment than I do, I'm just asking for clarification.

Thanks.