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Does Macrium free 5 know about SSDs?
If I image a system from HD, then restore it to SSD, will it give the
option to optimise for the latter, using Macrium 5? An article http://lifehacker.com/5837543/how-to...alling-windows (http://bit.ly/1RdY01Z for short) uses EaseUS Todo backup, which apparently has an "Optimize for SSD" function; however, I'm familiar with Macrium 5 (and have a boot disc for it), so was wondering if that has too. (Yes, I know it's not the latest Macrium, but - as well as all the hassle of downloading 6 and then making, and possibly testing, boot media for it, I've seen more than one user say they found 5 easier to understand.) -- J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf "Who came first? Adam or Eve?" "Adam of course; men always do." Victoria Wood (via Peter Hesketh) |
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#2
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Does Macrium free 5 know about SSDs?
J. P. Gilliver (John) wrote:
If I image a system from HD, then restore it to SSD, will it give the option to optimise for the latter, using Macrium 5? An article http://lifehacker.com/5837543/how-to...alling-windows (http://bit.ly/1RdY01Z for short) uses EaseUS Todo backup, which apparently has an "Optimize for SSD" function; however, I'm familiar with Macrium 5 (and have a boot disc for it), so was wondering if that has too. (Yes, I know it's not the latest Macrium, but - as well as all the hassle of downloading 6 and then making, and possibly testing, boot media for it, I've seen more than one user say they found 5 easier to understand.) I have done this with Macrium. I had a copy of Windows 7, that I (cleverly) managed to set up with MSDOS multiple-of-63 partitions. Moved the original drive contents to a new 512e drive, and the performance *sucked*. So I then kinda figured out how I'd shot myself in the foot, by prepping the original drive in WinXP, made a partition, then installed Windows 7 in the partition. If Windows 7 does automatic installation, it would have 1 megabyte alignment. But with my help, of prepping the drive in an older OS, I managed to screw up the alignment. So I needed to realign during cloning. I wanted to clone from malfunctioning MSDOS aligned disk to new one-megabyte-aligned disk. And Macrium can realign during the cloning operation. http://s9.postimg.org/gwn36sxhr/Macrium_Restore_CD.gif Click your (+) cursor to magnify that film strip. In the picture with the instruction "In this case I moved the center divider to the right" you will see "Alignment" as an option. By selecting "Vista/7/SSD (1MB)" that will select a partition re-alignment suitable for 4K or SSD drives. You would apply that correction to each partition AFAIK. This may leave an "air gap" between partitions, but the alignment is more important than "making it look pretty". The above filmstrip, does not illustrate alignment. It was a simple attempt at a restore, but it does show the existence of a menu where you can adjust partition size and alignment if you want. And requires you to click "Next", then "Back", then use the "Partition Properties" of each partition, to get what you want. Paul |
#3
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Does Macrium free 5 know about SSDs?
In message , Paul
writes: J. P. Gilliver (John) wrote: If I image a system from HD, then restore it to SSD, will it give the option to optimise for the latter, using Macrium 5? [] I have done this with Macrium. [] So I needed to realign during cloning. I wanted to clone from malfunctioning MSDOS aligned disk to new one-megabyte-aligned disk. And Macrium can realign during the cloning operation. (By "cloning" I hope you mean "restoring from [Macrium] image", but I think from the filmstrip that's what you were doing. [It's what I will be.]) http://s9.postimg.org/gwn36sxhr/Macrium_Restore_CD.gif Click your (+) cursor to magnify that film strip. In the picture with the instruction "In this case I moved the center divider to the right" you will see "Alignment" as an option. By selecting "Vista/7/SSD (1MB)" that will select a partition re-alignment suitable for 4K or SSD drives. You would apply that correction to each partition AFAIK. This Thanks. (It's for a blind friend's 60th birthday: his wife and I have bought him an SSD, which is going into his laptop.) I'll look into doing it for each partition as you say: there seem to be three of them - "D: system" which seems to be about 7G, "C: Windows" which seems to be the main one, and "E;" (no name; these are the names and letters Macrium 5 64 bit free has given them) which is about 500 MB (not GB). may leave an "air gap" between partitions, but the alignment is more important than "making it look pretty". Indeed. (I can only assume "E:" was the result of some previous such activity! Macrium included all three in the image anyway, no problem.) The above filmstrip, does not illustrate alignment. It was a simple attempt at a restore, but it does show the existence of a menu where you can adjust partition size and alignment if you want. And requires you to click "Next", then "Back", then use the "Partition Properties" of each partition, to get what you want. Looks good though. I'd trust a Paul throwaway example more than I'd trust more specific ones from many other people, anyway. Paul I've hear/read/whatever that W7 and later are happy with SSDs, which I assume means TRIM [whatever that is (-:!] and anything similar, but the reassurance that Macrium 5 free knows about alignment, or really just that I'll see some mention of SSDs, is most reassuring - and the tip about going back a step is good too. (Yes, I could have just tried making an image and restoring from it to see, but [a] it takes a while to do so [on a laptop with only one drive bay], [b] it's nice to have the reassurance, and [c] I'd probably not have spotted the "back" anyway.) Thanks again. If I have time, I'll report how we get on. Anything else I should advise my friend about using an SSD? I've already told him not to defrag it. Especially if you have any thoughts specific to the blind. (Who have the advantage over us, when it comes to SSDs, that their collections tend not to include any video, so are small!) -- J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf .... unlike other legal systems the common law is permissive. We can do what we like, unless it is specifically prohibited by law. We are not as rule-bound and codified as other legal systems. - Helena Kennedy QC (Radio Times 14-20 July 2012). |
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Does Macrium free 5 know about SSDs?
J. P. Gilliver (John) wrote:
In message , Paul writes: J. P. Gilliver (John) wrote: If I image a system from HD, then restore it to SSD, will it give the option to optimise for the latter, using Macrium 5? [] I have done this with Macrium. [] So I needed to realign during cloning. I wanted to clone from malfunctioning MSDOS aligned disk to new one-megabyte-aligned disk. And Macrium can realign during the cloning operation. (By "cloning" I hope you mean "restoring from [Macrium] image", but I think from the filmstrip that's what you were doing. [It's what I will be.]) http://s9.postimg.org/gwn36sxhr/Macrium_Restore_CD.gif Click your (+) cursor to magnify that film strip. In the picture with the instruction "In this case I moved the center divider to the right" you will see "Alignment" as an option. By selecting "Vista/7/SSD (1MB)" that will select a partition re-alignment suitable for 4K or SSD drives. You would apply that correction to each partition AFAIK. This Thanks. (It's for a blind friend's 60th birthday: his wife and I have bought him an SSD, which is going into his laptop.) I'll look into doing it for each partition as you say: there seem to be three of them - "D: system" which seems to be about 7G, "C: Windows" which seems to be the main one, and "E;" (no name; these are the names and letters Macrium 5 64 bit free has given them) which is about 500 MB (not GB). may leave an "air gap" between partitions, but the alignment is more important than "making it look pretty". Indeed. (I can only assume "E:" was the result of some previous such activity! Macrium included all three in the image anyway, no problem.) The above filmstrip, does not illustrate alignment. It was a simple attempt at a restore, but it does show the existence of a menu where you can adjust partition size and alignment if you want. And requires you to click "Next", then "Back", then use the "Partition Properties" of each partition, to get what you want. Looks good though. I'd trust a Paul throwaway example more than I'd trust more specific ones from many other people, anyway. Paul I've hear/read/whatever that W7 and later are happy with SSDs, which I assume means TRIM [whatever that is (-:!] and anything similar, but the reassurance that Macrium 5 free knows about alignment, or really just that I'll see some mention of SSDs, is most reassuring - and the tip about going back a step is good too. (Yes, I could have just tried making an image and restoring from it to see, but [a] it takes a while to do so [on a laptop with only one drive bay], [b] it's nice to have the reassurance, and [c] I'd probably not have spotted the "back" anyway.) Thanks again. If I have time, I'll report how we get on. Anything else I should advise my friend about using an SSD? I've already told him not to defrag it. Especially if you have any thoughts specific to the blind. (Who have the advantage over us, when it comes to SSDs, that their collections tend not to include any video, so are small!) There are a metric ton of silly optimizations for SSDs, if you believe some of the web pages. (Turning off the noting of "Last Accessed" being one of them.) If Windows 7 was installed without tampering with the partitions, then the hard drive it was installed on would already have the correct (1 megabyte) alignment. It's only in cases where you define a partition using another OS like WinXP, where the alignment could be wrong for an SSD. I happened to prepare a partition for the Win7 OS install, using WinXP. I might have been searching for an empty enough disk to use, on the WinXP machine, when inadvertently making a mess of the Win7 setup. The flash pages are on power-of-two on an SSD, and that's why you're seeking any sort of power-of-two alignment. As that is likely to be superior to an MSDOS divisible-by-63 alignment (which is all wrong). Paul |
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Does Macrium free 5 know about SSDs?
| If I image a system from HD, then restore it to SSD, will it give the
| option to optimise for the latter, using Macrium 5? This is only indirectly related, but may be of some use: I noticed recently that Explorer was repeatedly accessing Registry values connected with DHCP service. (Which I don't even have running.) Having a new SSD I figured that can't be good, having pointless disk reads almost constantly. After some research I discovered the culprit: The icon in the system tray that indicates network activity. If that's set to display then Explorer keeps checking the current status and may read the Registry in the process! I never noticed that before. Ironically, it doesn't show an accurate display, anyway. I depend on my firewall for that. So I guess the moral of the story is that if you're installing an SSD it might be worthwhile running regmon/filemon or procmon to make sure you're not leading it to an early death unnecessarily, due to one or another process hitting the disk repeatedly. |
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Does Macrium free 5 know about SSDs?
On 01/01/2016 08:34 PM, Paul wrote:
[snip] There are a metric ton of silly optimizations for SSDs, if you believe some of the web pages. (Turning off the noting of "Last Accessed" being one of them.) The "last accessed" field has no be written every time the file is read. While caching may reduce the number of writes. That's still not good for a SSD. [snip] The flash pages are on power-of-two on an SSD, and that's why you're seeking any sort of power-of-two alignment. As that is likely to be superior to an MSDOS divisible-by-63 alignment (which is all wrong). Paul divisible-by-63 alignment? That sounds like an oversimplification of track alignment, which makes each partition start at the beginning of a disk track (sector 1). Instead of 63, you'd use the number of sectors on a track. It it's 63 (the largest number that field can hold, at the time). you probably have an IDE drive that translates its geometry, so that number is useless to you. The actual number of sectors may be printed on the drive label. Using 63 while having no idea of haw many sectors your disk has, is unlikely to help. -- Mark Lloyd http://notstupid.us/ "The statement that God created man in his own image is ticking like a time bomb in the foundations of Christianity." -- Arthur C. Clarke |
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Does Macrium free 5 know about SSDs?
Mark Lloyd wrote:
On 01/01/2016 08:34 PM, Paul wrote: [snip] There are a metric ton of silly optimizations for SSDs, if you believe some of the web pages. (Turning off the noting of "Last Accessed" being one of them.) The "last accessed" field has no be written every time the file is read. While caching may reduce the number of writes. That's still not good for a SSD. [snip] The flash pages are on power-of-two on an SSD, and that's why you're seeking any sort of power-of-two alignment. As that is likely to be superior to an MSDOS divisible-by-63 alignment (which is all wrong). Paul divisible-by-63 alignment? That sounds like an oversimplification of track alignment, which makes each partition start at the beginning of a disk track (sector 1). Instead of 63, you'd use the number of sectors on a track. It it's 63 (the largest number that field can hold, at the time). you probably have an IDE drive that translates its geometry, so that number is useless to you. The actual number of sectors may be printed on the drive label. Using 63 while having no idea of haw many sectors your disk has, is unlikely to help. I'm just noting what comes out of the math using the fake CHS used by modern hardware. Of course the disk does not have a constant number of sectors per track, and the drive is actually zoned. If you use your copy of PTEDIT32, you'll find all the numbers on an MSDOS partitioned hard drive, are divisible by 63. (This assumes you have not artificially modified it, but used the system utilities for the job. Like Disk Management on WinXP.) My purpose was not to explain how it happened, or what you could do to change it. It's just better to fix it, and move on, if the storage device is an SSD. And "Last Accessed" can be turned off. http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials...e-windows.html One of the early web pages for SSDs, was around five pages long, and really went overboard on the optimizations. "Last Accessed" was just one of about a dozen things they decided to mess with. You don't have to go that crazy. Another favorite topic, is "should I turn off the pagefile". And so on. I guess this is the fun of owning an SSD, is pampering it. And a word of warning. The housing of SSDs scratch easily, and I feel this was done on purpose. Take great care not to scratch the paint on the thing - if you need to make a warranty claim, they could use that as an excuse not to help you. Avoid tight fitting trays, if at all possible. The one I bought, used a sheet metal case with poor paint job on the outside, and you could scratch the paint off with a fingernail. Paul |
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Does Macrium free 5 know about SSDs?
(Restore from image going now. I envy you the speed of your restore - if
I read your example correctly, it completed in 56 seconds! Mine's taking about a minute a percent. I used the "restore partition properties" _before_ doing Next and Back, to check they were SSD-aligned [which they were anyway], though I did check using Next and Back as well. [Also to reduce the size of the main partition, of course, to fit onto the SSD {~240G replacing ~600G HD}.]) In message , Mark Lloyd writes: On 01/01/2016 08:34 PM, Paul wrote: [snip] There are a metric ton of silly optimizations for SSDs, if you believe some of the web pages. (Turning off the noting of "Last Accessed" being one of them.) That one _does_ sound sensible; if the "last accessed" information is stored somewhere other than the file itself, such as in a directory, then it would be two writes per write (and possibly even a write when only a read is taking place). The "last accessed" field has no be written every time the file is read. While caching may reduce the number of writes. That's still not good for a SSD. So how _do_ you turn it off? (And if you do, what do/does the date field[s] show?) [] -- J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf W-E-H-T-H-U-R: This is the worst spell of weather in months! |
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Does Macrium free 5 know about SSDs?
In message , Paul
writes: [] And "Last Accessed" can be turned off. http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials...mestamp-enable -disable-windows.html Ah, thanks; I hadn't read that post when I made my previous one. [] You don't have to go that crazy. Another favorite topic, is "should I turn off the pagefile". And so on. I guess this is the fun of owning an SSD, is pampering it. Might give _that_ one a go. And a word of warning. The housing of SSDs scratch easily, and I feel this was done on purpose. Take great care not to scratch the paint on the thing - if you need to make a warranty claim, they could use that as an excuse not to help you. Avoid tight fitting trays, if at all possible. The one I bought, used a sheet metal case with poor paint job on the outside, and you could scratch the paint off with a fingernail. [] Thanks for the warning, though too late (not that I think I've scratched it). The drive we bought was an OCZ; it _looked_ reasonably robust. The HD that came out was significantly (about two mm?) thicker, so the mounting - two rails, one using side screws and one an end and a below - aren't compressing it. -- J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf W-E-H-T-H-U-R: This is the worst spell of weather in months! |
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Does Macrium free 5 know about SSDs?
In message , Mayayana
writes: [] This is only indirectly related, but may be of some use: I noticed recently that Explorer All input welcome, as I'm new to SSDs, but ... was repeatedly accessing Registry values connected with DHCP service. (Which I don't even have running.) Having a new SSD I figured that can't be good, having pointless disk reads almost constantly. After some research .... isn't the registry held in RAM, and only written back to disc when you shut down Windows? I discovered the culprit: The icon in the system tray that indicates network activity. If that's set to display then Explorer keeps checking the current status and may read the Registry in the process! I never noticed that before. Ironically, it doesn't show an accurate display, anyway. I depend on my firewall for that. I use an ancient one called BitMeter - not really for accuracy, but I have it set to beep every 100 kB transferred, which alerts me to any unexpected traffic [none so far (-:] and gives me feedback on transfer rates (up and down). So I guess the moral of the story is that if you're installing an SSD it might be worthwhile running regmon/filemon or procmon to make sure you're not leading it to an early death unnecessarily, due to one or another process hitting the disk repeatedly. I fear my knowledge isn't that detailed. -- J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf W-E-H-T-H-U-R: This is the worst spell of weather in months! |
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Does Macrium free 5 know about SSDs?
| was repeatedly accessing Registry values | connected with DHCP service. (Which I don't | even have running.) Having a new SSD I | figured that can't be good, having pointless | disk reads almost constantly. After some research | | ... isn't the registry held in RAM, and only written back to disc when | you shut down Windows? | Good point. I didn't think of that. I bet you're probably right, as long as there isn't a changed value involved. |
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Does Macrium free 5 know about SSDs?
"Mayayana"
Mon, 04 Jan 2016 02:28:28 GMT in alt.windows7.general, wrote: | was repeatedly accessing Registry values | connected with DHCP service. (Which I don't | even have running.) Having a new SSD I | figured that can't be good, having pointless | disk reads almost constantly. After some research | | ... isn't the registry held in RAM, and only written back to disc | when you shut down Windows? | Good point. I didn't think of that. I bet you're probably right, as long as there isn't a changed value involved. Hmm.. I don't think it writes changes made to the registry back to the hard disc right away. I suspect? it does this when the user logs off and/or when the system is shutdown and/or restarted. It may possibly rewrite the registry to ensure it matches whats in memory after a specified period of time, but, I don't know that to be true. I'm sure you've noticed that Windows has a tendency for forgetting some settings you've changed recently (involving the registry) if an improper shutdown occurs (such as a power loss or unexpected small person hitting the hard reset button on the case) - I think it's forgotten these changes you made because the registry isn't updated on the HD when you initially made those changes. -- Hey listen... On your way back up, bring some popcorn...With salt. |
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Does Macrium free 5 know about SSDs?
| I don't think it writes changes made to the registry back to the hard
| disc right away. I suspect? it does this when the user logs off | and/or when the system is shutdown and/or restarted. It may possibly | rewrite the registry to ensure it matches whats in memory after a | specified period of time, but, I don't know that to be true. | | I'm sure you've noticed that Windows has a tendency for forgetting | some settings you've changed recently (involving the registry) if an | improper shutdown occurs I haven't noticed that, but what you say makes sense. I know the old INI approach required flushing the file cache in order to force a disk write. Now if I could just figure out why Online Armor repeatedly accesses its own files, and repeatedly tries to access a file that doesn't exist. That's what I see in Filemon, and have for years. But now with an SSD I wonder about it. |
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Does Macrium free 5 know about SSDs?
On 01/01/2016 9:46 AM, J. P. Gilliver (John) wrote:
If I image a system from HD, then restore it to SSD, will it give the option to optimise for the latter, using Macrium 5? An article http://lifehacker.com/5837543/how-to...alling-windows (http://bit.ly/1RdY01Z for short) uses EaseUS Todo backup, which apparently has an "Optimize for SSD" function; however, I'm familiar with Macrium 5 (and have a boot disc for it), so was wondering if that has too. (Yes, I know it's not the latest Macrium, but - as well as all the hassle of downloading 6 and then making, and possibly testing, boot media for it, I've seen more than one user say they found 5 easier to understand.) Yes, Macrium has the ability to align to the proper sectors depending on storage medium. Yousuf Khan |
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