What about alignment on Win 7?

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plain
Posts: 53
Joined: Tue Dec 18, 2012 6:33 pm

What about alignment on Win 7?

Post by plain »

When booting only Windows 7 is there an advantage to using "Win7 MBR" in the "View MBR" box? Do I need to align partitions only on 1Mib boundaries?, and can these settings conflict with instructions saved in IFW when restoring an image?
Although I am, after several years, starting to grasp some of the concepts put forth in the BIBM User Guide, to me it is still confusing as to what is permissible and what isn't and I'm hoping you guys can help with some clarity.
For the sake of not being unclear, I used the method advised by Terabyte to get rid of the Windows 7 boot partition and the booting method is still legacy booting because I used to have XP on here and I'm not interested in learning 'modern' techniques right now. Just turn the thing on and surf! :D Anyway, Thanks for any help you can provide.
plain
CyberSimian
Posts: 137
Joined: Wed Aug 10, 2016 12:13 pm

Re: What about alignment on Win 7?

Post by CyberSimian »

plain wrote:
> When booting only Windows 7 is there an advantage to using "Win7
> MBR" in the "View MBR" box?

I boot Win7 in MBR mode using BIBM, and always accept whatever default BIBM gives me. No problems so far, but I woud be interested to learn what that setting provides.

< Do I need to align partitions only on 1Mib boundaries?

With BIBM, I always align partitions on 1MiB boundaries. It is a simple rule to follow, and it ensures that the partitions will work optimally if they reside on an SSD. As I understand it, SSDs work best if the partitions have 64KiB alignment, and 1MiB alignment ensures 64KiB alignment too.

If you follow the practice of creating four tiny dummy partitions at the end of each EMBR disk, 1MiB alignment means that these dummy partitions can be 1MiB is size, so they occupy a total of only 4MiB -- a piddling amount with modern disks.

-- from CyberSimian in the UK
plain
Posts: 53
Joined: Tue Dec 18, 2012 6:33 pm

Re: What about alignment on Win 7?

Post by plain »

Oh! If I'd known that I would have defaulted to Win7 MBR mode long ago and my life would have been a lot easier. Thanks!

My conflicts with Align on 1 MiB boundaries are the various options to use "Align on end" and other check boxes and I guess I have a hard time reconciling instructions in one paragraph telling me not to check both and down just half a page there are options to use both together and how it would work.

Also my understanding is no partitions will change just because you have changed BIBM options, but only after the partition is moved, resized, shifted, etc. Is that also true if you choose "Win7 MBR" and BIBM defaults to choices different than those you have at present?

Thanks for the reply CyberSimian!
DrTeeth
Posts: 1289
Joined: Fri Aug 12, 2011 6:58 pm

Re: What about alignment on Win 7?

Post by DrTeeth »

On Tue, 26 Feb 2019 07:43:19 PST, just as I was about to take a herb,
plain disturbed my reverie and wrote:

> If I'd known that I would have defaulted to Win7 MBR mode long ago and my life would have been a lot easier

> Is that also true if you choose "Win7 MBR" and BIBM defaults to choices different than those you have at present?

You may be getting confused between MBR and UEFI booting, it is not
clear. The only advantage to using the Win 7 MBR option that I can see
in the manual is that it "writes a Windows 7 specific version of the
MBR, which may be required for Windows 7 to boot on certain systems".
I have always used the align to 1Mb option with hard drives too.

I am resolutely an MBR fan. UEFI does not interest me in the
slightest and does not bring me any advantages. Others love it. My
latest i9-9900K on a Z390 chipset is MBR.
--
Cheers,

DrT

** Amateurs built the Ark, but professionals built the Titanic.**
plain
Posts: 53
Joined: Tue Dec 18, 2012 6:33 pm

Re: What about alignment on Win 7?

Post by plain »

Yes. That is what I'm talking about! I too have no interest in UEFI until I will be forced to use it. My main interest in this is that when I fix everything on my HD like I want it, Win7 complains later about the arrangement not being the same as Win7 would have done it. Specifically when deleting or reformatting a partition in Win7.

So if I choose to check the box for BIBM to use the specific Windows 7 method will it stop the complaints? Everything works fine otherwise so it really won't matter as far as reliability. I'm just curious if anyone has seen a different response than myself.
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