XP Pro image from HDD to SSD - specific Q

[COPOHawk]

I have a customer with a workstation that I want to reload a complete Ghost image onto a new SSD (Intel G2 80 GB)...it currently has a 7200 rpm HDD.

I have installed a number of SSDs, but the OS install has always been fresh...with some Win 7 and some XP.

The problem: The customer doesn't want to have a single IOTA of change on their current XP Pro system (ie...no reinstall of the OS and no switching to Win 7 for TRIM). So after doing some research, I am pretty sure that the partition wont be aligned properly.

The question: Is this going to impact SSD performance enough that it is a bad idea? How about running the Intel SSD toolbox app to correct it?


Thanks.

 

[Hacp]

I have a customer with a workstation that I want to reload a complete Ghost image onto a new SSD (Intel G2 80 GB)...it currently has a 7200 rpm HDD.

I have installed a number of SSDs, but the OS install has always been fresh...with some Win 7 and some XP.

The problem: The customer doesn't want to have a single IOTA of change on their current XP Pro system (ie...no reinstall of the OS and no switching to Win 7 for TRIM). So after doing some research, I am pretty sure that the partition wont be aligned properly.

The question: Is this going to impact SSD performance enough that it is a bad idea? How about running the Intel SSD toolbox app to correct it?


Thanks.

Some drives like to be aligned. If its an Intel, alignment should not affect performance much.

 

[VeryCharBroiled]

the intel ssd toolbox will not fix the alignment.

my intel X25-M G2 80 gig was initially unaligned when I imaged my existing win7 install to it.. it was still stupid fast. benches were off a bit compared to aligned but not by much as I recall. this was a brand new drive at the time though.

main thing will be increased wear. not sure just how much but many writes will wind up crossing 4k blocks that normally wouldnt. this will waste write cycles as well as probably slow it down some.

sign up for Paragons Partition Alignment Tool white paper and you can download their alignment program.. grab all 3 versions, win 32, win 64 and bootable linux CD. Ive used it several times already, it works fine.

image the XP install to the SSD, boot the PAT disc, align it and off you go. install the toolbox to do manual TRIMs.

 

[COPOHawk]

Thanks for the responses...

I will be doing this tomorrow...and I will post back the results

 

[FishAk]

Is XP effected by alignment? I thought 4k writes started with Vista.

 

[alaricljs]

Is XP effected by alignment? I thought 4k writes started with Vista.

It's the disk that has everything to do with alignment. "4k writes" is not the issue, it's location/addressing on 4k boundaries. If the disk is an SSD or a 4k sector HDD then WinXP will not create partitions in the right locations to align the data to 4k sectors and therefor cause more work for that disks controller (not the SATA dealie on the mobo, the on-disk controller).

I stayed far from Vista so know nothing about it, but win7 understands the 4k alignment issue and has no problems.

Imagine, if you will, a mail room with a slot for every person. If you "4k align" your deliveries then all the envelopes go nicely into the recipient's slot. If you don't align the deliveries then you have to neatly slice every single envelope and deposit most of it into the correct slot, and some of it into the next slot. Then it has to get put back together when the recipient comes to pick it up.

 

[sub.mesa]

Is XP effected by alignment? I thought 4k writes started with Vista.

XP is most affected by misalignment; because it misaligns partitions to begin with (31.5KiB offset). But also because it tends to read with a blocksize a multiple of 512 bytes. Thus Windows XP could write 4.5KiB which means the SSD has to write at least 8KiB and also read 3.5KiB in order to write the 0.5KiB that is 'sticking out' of pages which are 4K in size.

So when most people talk about alignment, they mean the start of the partition. That should begin on 1024K for example, while unaligned partitions start on 31.5KiB. Now it's easy to understand that, when you start at 31.5KiB and read 4KiB then you read 31.5KiB - 35.5KiB - then you two partially filled pages:

28K - 32K (filled with 0.5KiB of data)
32K - 36K (filled with 3.5KiB of data)

(note that actually Intel stores this differently; to remedy most of the effects)

The other alignment problem that exists with Windows XP is that it doesn't use a multiple of 4K blocks but a multiple of 512 byte blocks; i.e. it aligns to sectors instead to 4K-boundaries. In other words: XP by default has both begin and end points unaligned. You can fix the partition-start misalignment, but you cannot fix the read/write-end misalignment due to the way XP/NTFS is written.

Vista and Win7 will correctly align on 4K boundaries; so both the beginning and the end should be aligned.

Note that Intel SSDs are the ones least affected by misalignment; Sandforce based SSDs can seriously degrade when being used with Windows XP; unless all you do is move large files which is very uncommon and unusual for a small and expensive SSD.