Stereodude
Not really a
I ended up with a pile of posts in my other thread about this so I figured I would consolidate them here.
I've been trying to clone a 320GB spinning HD (with Windows 7 installed on it) to a 120GB Intel SSD since last night. There is/was a large empty partition on the 320GB I was okay with shrinking / omitting. Acronis TI Home 2011 and Acronis TI Home V11 both were unable to do so. Neither can restore an entire disk image in one shot and omit one of the partitions in the process. With both versions of Acronis it is possible to restore partitions one at a time from an image (thus excluding one) but this process destroys the alignment of the source partitions.
Ultimately, I thought I had protected against the HD to SSD problem when I installed Windows 7 on this 320GB HD originally. I installed it into a 30GB partition and left a large empty partition at the end and Windows 7 makes aligned partitions (1MiB aligned partitions to be specific). I later thought that by deleting the large empty partition and creating a new whole disk image and restoring it to the new SSD I would able to keep the remaining 3 partitions intact with some unused empty space at the end of the drive. Unfortunately, that's not how it works. With Acronis if the new drive is larger than the used space on the drive that was imaged, Acronis insists on expanding the partitions to fill the new drive instead of leaving empty space at the end.
My next idea was to create an aligned empty partition after the 3 partitions on the 320GB HD I want to keep that would bring the utilization of the 320GB drive to the exact size of the 120GB Intel SSD. Then I hoped to make an image the entire 320GB drive and have the restored image fit exactly on the Intel SSD and maintain it's alignment.
Unfortunately, that was only a pipe dream. I adjust the partitions on the 320GB HD so it had 120030494720 bytes used by partitions. This was equal to the largest possible usage of the 120GB Intel SSD with 1MiB aligned partitions. The Intel 120GB SSD has a 120031511040 byte capacity. A direct duplication would leave exactly 992.5kB unused on the Intel 120GB SSD which would be perfect! However, despite going to all this effort Acronis still wouldn't restore the image to the drive and leave the partition sizes and placement alone.
There are 4 partitions on the 320GB drive:
Then I decided to do a "clone" instead of creating an image instead of writing the image back to see if this would change the results. This yielded the exact same results as above.
Next, I tried out Miray HDClone with brags about having 4k sector alignment. Even after telling it to make no changes to the partitions it still altered the partitions on the Intel 120GB SSD. Like Acronis it left the starting alignment of the first partition alone, and then proceeded to alter the size of the first partition and then the starting locations and sizes of the subsequent partitions slightly so they no longer fell on 1MiB boundaries and were not aligned.
Lastly, I used Miray HDClone to do a 1:1 "RAW" sector for sector copy equal to the number of sectors on the Intel 120GB SSD. This finally worked! It took a lot longer to clone, but the SSD has the exact same aligned structure as the source drive. Now the drive is installed in my laptop and works!
Ultimately, both versions of Acronis (V11 & 2011) will hold partition alignment for the start of the first partition of on a drive, but will alter the ending alignment and start location (alignment) & size of subsequent partitions for multi-partition drive. Miray HDClone does the same thing unless you do a 1:1 "RAW" sector read instead of a "smart" clone.
I've been trying to clone a 320GB spinning HD (with Windows 7 installed on it) to a 120GB Intel SSD since last night. There is/was a large empty partition on the 320GB I was okay with shrinking / omitting. Acronis TI Home 2011 and Acronis TI Home V11 both were unable to do so. Neither can restore an entire disk image in one shot and omit one of the partitions in the process. With both versions of Acronis it is possible to restore partitions one at a time from an image (thus excluding one) but this process destroys the alignment of the source partitions.
Ultimately, I thought I had protected against the HD to SSD problem when I installed Windows 7 on this 320GB HD originally. I installed it into a 30GB partition and left a large empty partition at the end and Windows 7 makes aligned partitions (1MiB aligned partitions to be specific). I later thought that by deleting the large empty partition and creating a new whole disk image and restoring it to the new SSD I would able to keep the remaining 3 partitions intact with some unused empty space at the end of the drive. Unfortunately, that's not how it works. With Acronis if the new drive is larger than the used space on the drive that was imaged, Acronis insists on expanding the partitions to fill the new drive instead of leaving empty space at the end.
My next idea was to create an aligned empty partition after the 3 partitions on the 320GB HD I want to keep that would bring the utilization of the 320GB drive to the exact size of the 120GB Intel SSD. Then I hoped to make an image the entire 320GB drive and have the restored image fit exactly on the Intel SSD and maintain it's alignment.
Unfortunately, that was only a pipe dream. I adjust the partitions on the 320GB HD so it had 120030494720 bytes used by partitions. This was equal to the largest possible usage of the 120GB Intel SSD with 1MiB aligned partitions. The Intel 120GB SSD has a 120031511040 byte capacity. A direct duplication would leave exactly 992.5kB unused on the Intel 120GB SSD which would be perfect! However, despite going to all this effort Acronis still wouldn't restore the image to the drive and leave the partition sizes and placement alone.
There are 4 partitions on the 320GB drive:
- Partition 0 - 4166MB
- Partition 1 - 100MB
- Partition 2 - 30729MB
- Partition 3 - 79474MB (empty filler)
Then I decided to do a "clone" instead of creating an image instead of writing the image back to see if this would change the results. This yielded the exact same results as above.
Next, I tried out Miray HDClone with brags about having 4k sector alignment. Even after telling it to make no changes to the partitions it still altered the partitions on the Intel 120GB SSD. Like Acronis it left the starting alignment of the first partition alone, and then proceeded to alter the size of the first partition and then the starting locations and sizes of the subsequent partitions slightly so they no longer fell on 1MiB boundaries and were not aligned.
Lastly, I used Miray HDClone to do a 1:1 "RAW" sector for sector copy equal to the number of sectors on the Intel 120GB SSD. This finally worked! It took a lot longer to clone, but the SSD has the exact same aligned structure as the source drive. Now the drive is installed in my laptop and works!
Ultimately, both versions of Acronis (V11 & 2011) will hold partition alignment for the start of the first partition of on a drive, but will alter the ending alignment and start location (alignment) & size of subsequent partitions for multi-partition drive. Miray HDClone does the same thing unless you do a 1:1 "RAW" sector read instead of a "smart" clone.
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