Hello, I suspect the issue you are thinking of is the alignment of the file system over the sectors of the hard disk.
SSDs and some of the newest SATA HDDs use a sector size of 4,096 bytes, instead of the more common 512 byte size. As I understand it, the issue here is that software (e.g., operating systems) which do not recognize 4K sectors will instead end up getting reads and writes mapped by drive firmware in eight 512-byte sector blocks, which leads to all sorts of inefficiencies, not just with file storage, but things like directory structures. If you do accidentally load a 512-byte sector disk image on to a 4K-sector hard disk drive, you can re-align by running a program like Acronis True Image to adjust the alignment. For example, Western Digital provides a version of ATI to do this for their customers on their web site at http://support.wdc.com/product/download.asp?groupid=805 4,069 byte sectors are called "Advanced Format" (AF) technology and there is an industry-wide standardization effort led by the International Disk Drive Equipment and Materials Association (IDEMA) for HDD manufacturers to transition HDDs over to AF. For more information, there is an article on Wikipedia explaining it in detail at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Format, as well as the IDEMA web site at http://www.idema.org/?page_id=98. Interestingly enough, IDEMA seems to reside in the neighborhood I grew up in. If any list members ever visit, I highly recommend the soups at John's XLNT Foods next door. Regards, Aryeh Goretsky At 10:00 AM 2/9/2011, you wrote:
Message: 5 Date: Tue, 8 Feb 2011 21:55:52 +0100 From: "Adrian Belu" <[email protected]> Subject: Re: [Thinkpad] O/T: Alternative to Acronis for backup? To: <[email protected]> Message-ID: <C74607E666E349EF9C4B3AE86BC850DF@ELBERETH> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" I uses EASEUS (booted from a CD in the docking station) to clone my 40 GB Win 7 partition on my 60 GB SSD in my X41 tablet, to a standard IDE 40 GB drive on a USB interface. This latter drive then boots fine on my X31. I guess if the SSD dies, I would use the X31 the time I buy a new disk for the X41t, then clone back. I remember however reading something about the fact that the cloning might not be optimal, so the end result (forward, then back) would be not similar to the initial image (something related
_______________________________________________ Thinkpad mailing list [email protected] http://stderr.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/thinkpad
