Macrium Reflect

Discussion in 'backup, imaging & disk mgmt' started by Stigg, Nov 23, 2013.

  1. Hadron

    Hadron Registered Member

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  2. oliverjia

    oliverjia Registered Member

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    LOL, no complete SSD support for the free version?
     
  3. Brian K

    Brian K Imaging Specialist

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    oliverjia,

    What does it mean?
     
  4. taotoo

    taotoo Registered Member

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  5. Hadron

    Hadron Registered Member

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    Indeed. What does that mean? o_O
     
  6. oliverjia

    oliverjia Registered Member

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    not 100% sure, I am guessing it might mean that the free version does not support SSD auto alignment (4k alignment). If it's the case, then it's a big disappointment.

    Maybe someone having access to their forums could find out?
     
  7. Peter2150

    Peter2150 Global Moderator

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    Why? If you can spend the extra bit of money on SSD's why not buy Macrium. Personally, I think it was a smart move on their part
     
  8. ratchet

    ratchet Registered Member

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    I purchased v6 several days ago and system is SSD, so what is SSD auto alignment? Thank you!
     
  9. Fad

    Fad Registered Member

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    It has the option of sending the Trim command on an SSD, after a restore.

    I presume that`s what Full SSD support means.
     
  10. TheRollbackFrog

    TheRollbackFrog Imaging Specialist

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    I don't think it's ever had AUTO alignment... but manual select alignment has always been there. I think "SSD Support" means automatic TRIMming upon restore which seems to be new with v6.
     
  11. ratchet

    ratchet Registered Member

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    Must have posted almost simultaneous!
     
  12. TheRollbackFrog

    TheRollbackFrog Imaging Specialist

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    WikiPedia has a good description of Reverse Incremental...
     
  13. TheRollbackFrog

    TheRollbackFrog Imaging Specialist

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    To my knowledge, "4k alignment" doesn't have much of anything to do with SSDs. The alignment issue with SSDs is internal NAND Block alignment, which at the sector level is 2048 512-byte sectors or a 1mB alignment. The 4K issue usually deals with the newer LARGE HDDs as such.
     
  14. TheRollbackFrog

    TheRollbackFrog Imaging Specialist

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    Ratchet... the only "auto alignment" feature for SSDs that I know of is when Windows (7 or 8 ) is first built, if it detects an SSD as the device to build on, it sets the partition boundaries at 1mB intervals to align properly with the SSD's internal NAND blocks (actually, it may have been doing that for all <BLANK> storage device builds from VISTA on). If the build was done to an existing partition already on the storage device, then the boundary will be whatever that partition is currently aligned at.

    If other restoration-type softwares think they can autodetect an SSD (I don't know of many), then they can do the same by re-aligning the partition boundaries upon restoration... but many feel that's a bit presumtious on their part (why should I be messing around with what the user has given me). What many restoration softwares do offer is the option to restore at either the SSD NAND block alignment point (1mB... has been used since Vista) or the old XP CHS (Cylinder/Head/Sector... LBA 64) HDD alignment point.

    Other than that, I'm not really sure what "auto alignment" really means.

    If your new SSD-based system was generated properly (built on the proper partition boundaries), Macrium will image from there and restore to there without issue. If the system was built on the wrong boundaries, Macrium will still work properly but long term degradation (excessive WRITE amplification) will occur within your SSD, eventually shortening its life.
     
    Last edited: Feb 27, 2015
  15. TheRollbackFrog

    TheRollbackFrog Imaging Specialist

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    As I look at that FEATURE COMPARISON chart, it says "No SSD TRIM Support," which is brand new to v6 where TRIMming is executed following the restoration.

    That's really not an issue. TRIMming of "free space" has never been available under W7 except through a 3rd party solution (SSDtool), only "Dynamic TRIMming" of the SYSTEM volume (if detected as an SSD) was available. W8's "Optimization" features handle free space TRIMming just fine... no issues that I'm aware of. Once the restoration has been TRIMmed, all is as it should be as far as SSD optimization is concerned.

    I know of no other imaging solution which offers automatic TRIMming upon restoration... but I could easily be wrong with that assertion :oops:
     
  16. taotoo

    taotoo Registered Member

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  17. TheRollbackFrog

    TheRollbackFrog Imaging Specialist

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  18. TheRollbackFrog

    TheRollbackFrog Imaging Specialist

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    The original FEATURE MATRIX said this could be done by the SERVER Edition... turns out it cannot (I think they've changed the matrix accordingly). Macrium states it may be available in a future edition if demand warrants.
     
    Last edited: Feb 27, 2015
  19. TheRollbackFrog

    TheRollbackFrog Imaging Specialist

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    <Yikes!> Just realized, this thread is starting to look like a FROG LOG... sorry. I'll wait in the wings for a while... :oops:
     
  20. taotoo

    taotoo Registered Member

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    Thanks! That's quite a hotline you have going there :thumb:
     
  21. Acadia

    Acadia Registered Member

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    Froggie, you are one of just several posters in all Wilders, that if you take over a thread, it is STILL interesting, educating, and most important, not full of garbage. Keep on keeping on!
    Acadia
     
  22. Peter2150

    Peter2150 Global Moderator

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    I agree. Besides what is wrong with frog legs?
     
  23. oliverjia

    oliverjia Registered Member

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    Froggie, the 4k alignment is what you need for a SSD to properly function. 1MB alignment is the new alignment scheme from Vista on, and 1MB can be integrally divided by 4k, so 1MB is a special case of 4k alignment.

    http://www.disk-partition.com/articles/ssd-4k-alignment.html

    "
    Why need to SSD 4K alignment?
    Comparing to the traditional hard drive, SSD has its brilliant advantages, such as higher read and write speed than mechanical hard disk, low-power dissipation, portability and wide temperature range of working environment, etc. Thus SSD is becoming more and more widely used than HDD to improve the performance of partition Assistant. However, the computer performance is decreased after running a period of time. What’s the reason for it?

    As we all know that, we need to partition SSD when we got a brand new computer, but during the process, it may cause something not proper, such as unreasonable number of partitions, partitions are not align, etc. And it is also well known to us that SSD adopt the smallest 4K sector in file system to save data. But in fact, the 4K allocation units are not always aligned in SSD. Therefore, it will lead bad performance of SSD. And if the 4K sector is not aligned, even for the small amount of data occupies two 4K sectors to store, which lead reading writing data across multiple sector. It has effect on the performance of computer. Thus we need to find a solution to figure this out. I recommend AOEMI Partition Assistant to do this."




     
    Last edited: Feb 27, 2015
  24. oliverjia

    oliverjia Registered Member

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    "auto" means if you restore a HDD image to a brand new, unpartitioned SSD, the imaging program will automatically align the restored OS at 4k boundary (usually 1MB) of a SSD. I know Acroins and Paragon both have the ability to detect whether the target drive is HDD or SSD.

    http://www.acronis.com/en-gb/support/documentation/ATIH2014/index.html#21824.html

    "SSD alignment

    Another question concerns the alignment of SSDs. To get the optimum performance from an SSD and to prolong its life, the partition offset must meet certain criteria. In most cases you do not need to check or manually fix the alignment, the program will do it automatically."



    https://kb.acronis.com/content/2699

    "This means that Acronis products detect whether the drive is a solid state or a mechanical one and will treat it as such.

    Typical examples:

    • If you restore or clone a disk image to an SSD disk, the recovered/cloned primary partitions will be aligned to the default starting offset 1024kb (2048 sectors).
    • If you restore a partition backup to a target empty non-partitioned (unallocated) SSDdisk, the target SSD disk will be automatically set to the default 1024kb (2048 sectors).
    • If you restore a partition backup to a target partitioned SSD disk, the default offset on the target disk will stay the same it was before the restore. In most of the cases this is the default offset of an SSD disk (64kb or 1024kb).
    A multiple of 64kb (most commonly, 1024kb or 2048 sectors) is the recommended offset for SSD disks."





     
  25. oliverjia

    oliverjia Registered Member

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    LOL, if this is the case, I don't see any negative problem without that TRIM support. Windows 8 and up has built-in trim support, so even if Macrium won't issue a trim command upon restore an image to SSD, it does not matter at all, as Windows 8/8.1 will do it automatically. So the whole TRIM thing here is a non-issue.

     
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