It should. Align the partition(s) so they start on an even 1MB boundary, and you’re set. “Aligning drives” is a bit of a misnomer; I probably say it, since that was something we had to do in my Commodore days all too often. Of course back then, alignment meant something entirely different.

I’m also guessing that doing so does NOT do a defrag in the process.

Should I do a disk alignment first, or a partition alignment?

Not worried about using an old version of Acronis for myself, but it would be nice to have a canonical free gpl stable solid program to recommend to others to download quickly when people need it.

I used ghost for dos for a few years as well, when I was a computer tech circa 1995.

Haven’t tried my old copy of acronis with vista or win7 as I’m still using xp sp2.

For sure I highly recommend spinning a custom bartpe boot cd with any win32 apps you need for tech work. And that’s apart from linux live cds, of course.

I ran benches on an old machine (sempron 754) and alignment made a huge difference. I use AS SSD benchmark program which all the overclockers and benchmark guys seem to be using these days, it tests very nicely compared to older benches that are tuned for mechanical drives. This testing app will do threaded reads etc to really stress what solid state offers: very fast random access. Of course it does the usual bw tests too.

http://www.alex-is.de/PHP/fusion/downloads.php?cat_id=4

What I’ve noticed when using sandforce SF-1200 is that the only thing you really need to care about is alignment. I use IDE mode, so no ahci, and no SSD specific OS tweaks. Honestly this is the way I like it, simple and useable without screwing around forever.

So yeah I’m an SSD fan.

I have not used Clonezilla, but know someone who has and he recommends it, at least in an environment where you have a server, or something that can stand as one. I use Ghost because I’m familiar with it, but that’s the only reason. Acronis works well but I’ve used it maybe a half dozen times, where I’ve used Ghost hundreds or thousands of times.

I do need to investigate some GPL imaging software, definitely. The question comes up a lot, if my Google search logs are any indication. But if Acronis 10 is working for you, don’t worry about it being old. I’ve been using the same old version of Ghost since 2005 or 2006. Before that, I used a DOS version of it for a good 5 years.

As for the difference alignment makes, I didn’t run any benchmarks, but on my main workaday PC it’s enough that I definitely notice it. Enough that I know I’m not imagining things. I’m really curious to see what it does to a JMicron 602-based drive now.

It’s great that gparted does a simulation run first.

What do you recommend to do disk imaging? I currently use Acronis True Image 10 Home (old version nowadays) and I have not had any problems using WinXP SP2. I should also say that I did make a bartpe cd disc with the acronis plugin on it so that I have absolute bootable compatibility (it boots on any machine and works).

I have heard good things about clonezilla but not used it. Have you?

I would much rather depend on a gpl project…