True Restore???

I noticed that True Image 10 doesn't do a "True Restore". I did a defrag with Perfect Disk before making a image with True Image 10, I then made a another image right after that using Image for Windows. I restored the C: drive using True Image and opened Perfect Disk and after analyzing saw that all of the MTF Zone, MTF, Metadata, and Page file was moved to different sectors. I then restored the Image for Windows backup and opened Perfect Disk and ran the analyzer and those were put back into the exact sectors they were at.

Why can't True Image do an exact restore?

JAH

 

I guess by "True Restore" you mean that bits of a given sector of the source drive are placed in the very same sector in the very same physical location on the target drive. What would be the value of that? If you've got all the bits in places that work, why would you be concerned that the bits of any given sector are not in the exact same sector when restored?

Note that you run PD offline and it will move the the MTF etc files back to the physcal middle (as opposed to logical middle) of the disk. That's one of the things PD does, although it's unclear what appreciable benefit that provides. Even Winodws doesn't locate them in the physcial middle. Arguably, some insignificant gain is average access time is achieved if those files are near the physcal center of the disk, but that would only occur is the disk was full or nearly full. I like PD but that one feature seems pretty pointless.

 

I appreciate your reply and wanted to know why PD will place those files in the middle of the partition. So went to PD site and read this PDF file.

Unique Differences PD8 DK2007.pdf
http://www.raxco.com/products/perfectdisk2k/whitepapers/Unique_Differences_PD8_DK2007.pdf

In reading it PD states these files are moved there for preformance reasons of about 5-10% preformance improvement according to Microsoft.

True Image restore just moved them all right up against the other files which isn't an exact restore. Over all True Image 10 is a pretty good program and I like many of it features.

JAH

 

Microsoft does say that placing those files inthe physcial middle can have a very slight increase in file access times in some situations. However, even Microsoft doesn't see any real overall value in moving the MTF files to the physical middle -- witness the fact that MS OSs don't format disk with the files in the middle. Moving them there, as PD does, only provides a potential 5% speed increase in access times if the disk is full. And 5% is not something that's likely to show up when you're using a wordprocessor or phtoshop, or whatever.

And furthermore, consider if the disk is only 1/3 or 1/2 full, then Access times will be longer because the mtf and swap files are way over at the physical middle of the disk and all the data is up front -- half the data will be close to the mtf but half will be as far away as possible. Few users have full disks. So, generally, the best place is not the middle. The best place is in the middle of all the data, assumming all the data is accessed equally frequently. How much data is on the drive probably varies on most drives so the ideal location changes all the time. The real ideal would be the have the files accessed most closest and those accessed least farthest away form mtf and swap files. But that's also very dynamic. All of which is probably why Microsoft OSs don't try to force the mtf ans wap files to the physical middle of the disk -- it would be beneficial only in rare, specific, and unlikely circumstances. At any rate, it probably is as liekly to hurt as help, so its a wash -- ie., not really something worth bothering with.

I'm not knocking PD in general; I think it's a terrific program in lots of ways. But that one feature is a bit like selling sugar to a beehive -- it sounds good until you actually try to figure out how the heck it makes things any sweeter.

As for exact same placement; I'm not sure that I'd ever want that -- the marked bad sectors, if any, are not likely to be in the same physical places on two diff harddisks.