Performance issue on WinXP after restore to new drive

[T-Rhex]

Hello. I've helped a client use IFD to move a WinXP system through several permutations from its original drive to the current one. It started as a 20GB IDE drive from years ago, moved to a 500GB SATA drive, then to a 320GB SATA, and lastly to one of the newest Seagate Barracuda 500GB SATA III drives. After the last round of image/restore, the user is reporting that one application is now showing performance problems while accessing a large-ish (3.5MB) file. I've run ram tests, restored the file in question from backups, and have run disk diagnostics to rule out failing sectors and drives.

Could I have introduced some kind of misalignment issue in using IFD to image/restore the drive? I know SSDs have particular alignment criteria, but what about HDDs? I've seen some 'net references to 512B drives versus 4k drives and wonder if I had to do anything in particular, rather than using IFD's default settings. The newest drive is a Seagate 7200.14 500GB Barracuda, but it looks like the drive supports both 512B and 4k sectors automatically (though my understanding of the whole thing is a bit fuzzy, no pun intended).

Thanks in advance,
tr

[EdBrady]

I had a similar issue recently. It was defeintely caused by an alignment issue... on some of the newer drives, mis-aignment can make a huge difference in performance. This was certainly true with mine, a Seagate 2TB drive. It was performing much worse than the old drive, from which I had copied the partitions using IFL.

In my case, I solved the issue with a program called Partition Alignment Tool. I'm sure it could have been fixed with IFD or IFL, but frankly, I read the manuals several times, and couldn't figure out what I should have done. I hope someone can post the answer here.

Also, it would be awfully nice if the TeraByte products offered automatic alignment as some other programs now do.

[Brian K]

Align partitions with BIBM or BING.

http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/ucf/vi ... lign#p4528

[DrTeeth]

On Sat, 16 Feb 2013 12:13:26 PST, just as I was about to take a herb,
EdBrady disturbed my reverie and wrote:

> I hope someone can post the answer here.

When making the ISOs for IfD/IfL, there is an option to set, 'align to
2048' or similar.
--

Cheers

DrT
______________________________
We may not be able to prevent the stormy times in
our lives; but we can always choose whether or not
to dance in the puddles (Jewish proverb).

[T-Rhex]

Thanks, all. (Apologies for the delay due to unavoidable events.)

So it is possible (that I messed up the alignment)? Of course, I don't have the computer/drive in question at hand, so I will have to check it out when I can. If my understanding is correct, I want the start offset of the partition to be divisible by 2048? Recall, this is a HDD not an SSD.

Is it possible to correct this using IFD? If I create another image and then restore it with "align to 2048" set, would that do it? I seem to recall I've been using "align to target". I'm thinking I didn't quite understand the implications.

Another question: If it's common to align to 2048, why is it not turned on by default? (I'm not questioning the design, just my understanding of it)

Thanks again.
tr

[DrTeeth]

On Sat, 16 Feb 2013 09:54:46 PST, just as I was about to take a herb,
T-Rhex disturbed my reverie and wrote:

> I've seen some 'net references to 512B drives versus 4k drives and wonder if I had to do anything in particular, rather than using IFD's default settings.

What you have read sounds like it refers to what can happen if you
convert a FAT32 system to an NTFS on. 512B clusters have a
performance penalty over a default 4KB cluster size. If formatting an
NTFS system from scratch, would have to specify the smaller size to
avoid the default.
--

Cheers

DrT
______________________________
We may not be able to prevent the stormy times in
our lives; but we can always choose whether or not
to dance in the puddles (Jewish proverb).

[TeraByte Support(PP)]

For the partition alignment, you should just need to do the restore using the following settings: Global option "Align Partitions on 2048 Sectors" enabled, Restore option "Align to Target" enabled.

[T-Rhex]

Thanks very much for the reply and info. I'll give it a try (won't be soon, though, the computer isn't readily accessible).

[DrTeeth]

On Tue, 5 Mar 2013 15:09:47 PST, just as I was about to take a herb,
TeraByte Support(PP) disturbed my reverie and wrote:

>For the partition alignment, you should just need to do the restore using the following settings: Global option "Align Partitions on 2048 Sectors" enabled, Restore option "Align to Target" enabled.
>
Why the 'align to target' as well?
--

Cheers

DrT
______________________________
We may not be able to prevent the stormy times in
our lives; but we can always choose whether or not
to dance in the puddles (Jewish proverb).

[TeraByte Support(PP)]

So it forces the alignment regardless of the alignment used on the source drive.