NTFS cluster size

I tried to find answer in TI 9 manual, no luck.

Can TI 9 change the NTFS cluster size when restoring a partition?

If not, is there a way to have TI restore an NTFS partitition that is formatted with a different NTFS cluster size than in the backup image?

The restore has to be done from a TI recovery CD as the partition is an OS partition.

 

According to this thread and the post by Acronis Support it doesn't: recovery image to different format bytes

You would need to use Disk Director (or a similar program) to change the cluster size after the restore.

(You actually posted in this thread, but it was over a year ago...)

 

Unfortunately, it is not always possible/easy to change cluster size.
This week, I finally managed to convert my sister's FAT 32 512 byte clusters to NTFS 4096 byte, but there was the obstacle of a corrupt file structure that was not consistently detected by chkdsk.

Finally, using Perfect Disk to defrag, PD reported a serious error. Only then did chkdsk fix the issue, and we were then able to do the deed.

I have no idea why chkdsk did not fix this before PD got involved.

Unfortunately, as I mentioned in another thread, TI would not restore ALL files from an image backup using files recovery. This would not be difficult to implement. Indeed, I could write a program to read the partition mounted from the FAT32 image and write the files to an NTFS (or fAT32) partition so why cannot TI?

 

You said in the other thread that you could restore the files when booted to the cd.

Were you trying to restore them back to the original locations?

If I'm understanding what you were trying to do, it was to create an NTFS partition (with 4,096 byte clusters) and then restore all the files from the FAT32 (512 byte clusters) image to it. However, TI would not restore ALL the files so it didn't work.

Did you end up converting the FAT32 partition to NTFS after the restore and then changing the cluster size? Or did you restore the FAT32 partition, change the cluster size and then convert to NTFS?

 

Yes, but the partition had already been reformatted.

Yes.

We restored the image and then converted to NTFS.

The problem in converting from 512 to 4096 byte clusters was caused by chkdsk failing to identify and not fix a problem.

Defragging with Perfect Disk likely exposed that error, and chkdsk was then able to fix the critter.

The preferred route would have been:

1. Re-format the partition as NTFS with 4096 byte clusters, thus wiping the files on the partition, then;

2. restoring ALL the files from the TI image for that partition.

Heck, if my sister had a multiboot system, she could have temporarily installed TI in the temp OS, and I could have given her a program to COPY the files from the TI image to the newly formatted hard drive.

Since I can create such a program, no reason that TI cannot have an option to accomplish the same deed. Yes, it would be a lot slower than an image restore, but if it gets the job done, so what!

It is very useful to have a multiboot system, if only to handle such issues.

 

Hello Howard Kaikow and anyone interested,

Thank you for choosing Acronis Disk Backup Software.

I would like to confirm what have been said: current versions of Acronis True Image do not have a function of changing the cluster size during restoration process (and the cluster size of the target partition before the restore doesn't matter because it gets wiped as a first step of the restore process). We recommend that you use special partition and disk managing software such as Acronis Disk Director Suite 10.0 to change 'cluster size' after you restore the image. You can find more information on what 'cluster size' is and how it can be changed using Acronis Disk Director Suite 10.0 in the respective User's Guide.

We recommend that you download and install the free trial version of Acronis Disk Director Suite 10.0 to see how the software works on your particular software\hardware configuration prior to purchasing it at Acronis official online store.

If you want us to change the behaviour of Acronis True Image in any way or add some new features to this product, please feel free to post any of your suggestions in Acronis True Image WISH-LIST thread.

If you have any further questions concerning Acronis software, please feel free to submit a request for technical support or post any of them on this forum. We will certainly try to help you in resolving any issues.

Thank you.
--
Marat Setdikov