Restoring without erasing partition or format info

Hi,

Is there a way I can make a backup of my C: drive that will not overwrite the existing partition and format information once restored? I have my Vista x64 OS and several apps on a 64GB SSD and I want to take everything on it and copy/clone the content to my other 64GB SSD. The partition on the original SSD was not properly aligned (i.e. optimized for SSD) and the NTFS format was done using the wrong file allocation size. So I fixed all that on my second SSD and now I want to restore the content of my first SSD (OS, apps, user settings, etc.) on my second SSD without wiping out what I just did. So how do I do that? I tried a couple of things with TI 2009 Home, but the partition alignment and file allocation size are always overwritten when restoring an image or cloning. Would a file backup be the solution (it's an OS partition, so it needs to be able to boot and start Vista)?

Thanks.

 

One possible option might be to use a program such as Replicator by Karen Kenworthy. This is a plain straight copy program which has lots of options and can copy all your files from one disk to another disk or partition.

http://www.karenware.com/powertools/powertools.asp

 

Thanks. I tried it but it doesn't work; When I boot from the SSD it complains about winload.exe

I tried copying everything with xcopy from my WinPE CD and I got the same error. Windows could not repair either installation.

What I'll try next is to install Vista from the DVD and then copy all the files from my original SSD to it. Hopefully I'll get better results.

 

Goldorak,

Could I ask about the alignment on the first SSD? What is "optimized for SSD"?

 

Sorry to say but I think you're out of luck. When TI restores a partition it first deletes the target partition, so there goes your preset formatting and alignment. The block size, starting sector alignment, and format of the source partition is then restored into the target partition.

I think you will need to reinstall from scratch on the second SSD to get what you want.

 

Brian:

I think he's referring to the starting sector offset. Using multiples of 64 sectors appears to minimize the number of I/O operations to an SSD and optimizes the speed. Here are two references: Microsoft presentation, OCZ forum.

The propensity of TI to realign partitions to a 63-sector offset upon restore will be a problem for people with SSDs. The default Vista and Win7 alignments of 2048-sector offset are better suited to SSDs.

 

Mark,

Thanks for the information.

I've done some tests with a different imaging app where I imaged a 63 sector offset partition and restored it to the same HD as a 2048 sector offset partition. Would that help here?

 

Brian:

Yes, I'll bet it would.

 

I'll post details in the "software & services forum"

https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?p=1432536#post1432536

 

Yes, that is exactly what I'm looking for. So what are you using?

Thanks.