Windows XP SP2 HDD/SDD alignment, sector size for capture?

[atomcc]

Hi, I have an old i7 920, 24GB RAM (too much I know but using old machine), 1 TB Samsung SSD with one NTFS partition, AIW PCI 7500 card, Turtle Beach Sound Card with sound attached internally to ATI card. In addition, a BV10 I haven't tried out yet.

I bought a sealed old CD of Windows XP2 (2002 edition), used it to format the SSD (had to slipstream the SATA drivers) and now have all of the software and AIW drivers and utilities installed.

It captures perfectly to that SSD as a test but then I got into reading bout how Windows XP misaligns the partitions on newer hard drives when formatting and could lead to a performance hit or errors.

Also, it is my understanding that Windows XP lacks a TRIM function that cleans up the SSD of deleted data and I shouldn't use a SSD for Win XP SP2. I turned off defragmenting and the other recommended things like indexing as suggested on some forums.

My plan was to get another SSD to capture but have read that it is just best to have everything on HDDs.

I have already activated Windows.

The questions are:

1. Can I keep the system OS on the SSD if I don't plan on installing anything else on the system SSD?

2. Can I install Acronis to that Win XP SP2 SSD to fix the misalignment/sector size issues and MBR compatibility?

3. Do I take that disk out, and use my other modern fully upgraded Win10 computer to fix the SSD with Acronis?

4. Do I clone the Win XP2 installation since it has already been activated on this SSD it to a HDD with Acronis with proper XP compatibility using my Win 10 machine?

5. Do I just start all over again, properly formatting a new HDD on my Win 10 computer with Acronis, then install XP2 again slipstreaming the drivers for SATA again? Not sure what I have to do about the re-activation. The first time I had to phone a number - perhaps I have to do that again?

Since capture is working perfectly well at the moment, I just want to buy a new compatible SATA HDD (which I assume has to be formatted from another computer with Acronis to be XP compatible given the different sector sizes/alignment/MBR). Is that possible?


The terminology is a bit overwhelming and no doubt I have much of it wrong. I know I shouldn't be using SSDs or using Windows XP SP2 to format the SSD but learned of it afterward.

Sorry to be a newbie. I have read a lot of posts here and on XP2 install guides.

Is anyone willing to assist me on what to do?

The easiest, I suppose, is starting anew with a regular HDD and making sure it is somehow formatted how Win XP SP2 wants it, using a program like Acronis on my Windows 10 machine and then putting back into the old computer?

Honestly I am just tempted to add a HDD, format with Win XP SP2, capture my tapes and hopefully nothing goes wrong.

Any opinions?
Thanks for reading if you got this far.

My apologies if we are covering the same topic too many times, I just want to clarify given that I finally got a working set of drivers to work with the AIW and the video looks beautiful and seems to be capturing correctly with VirtualDub.

[BW37]

I don't think anyone can give you definitive answers on some of this, just their opinions based on their personal experience and what they've read. As you, I did some research and found that some will say "never use an SSD with WinXP", others will say "I've been doing it for years with no problems". Personally, I've done it with one system but have very little run time on that system yet so can't really say much on long term issues. But the quick boot time and application start-up times are awful nice.

So here's my

At minimum, use Acronis to back up what you have working at this point. Set that aside so you could restore it if things go sideways...

You should then be able to use that back-up to reinstall your working OS/capture set-up to a properly partitioned SSD: partition in Win7 or Win10, then use as target in the WinXP restore. Either overwrite your existing SSD or use another SSD. For just the OS and capture software you don't need much space so even a 128GB SSD would be plenty though a larger one might be a bit more "no-trim" resilient/resistant, I'm not sure. You could also restore the back-up to an HDD and not worry about WinXP/SSD problems.

Once you've installed your back-up to another drive (even the same, repartitioned SSD), you may or may not have to reactivate your WinXP installation. I did this a number of times for one basic XP installation, creating back-ups at various states to try different drivers, different sound cards, etc. and it was a bit hit or miss as to when XP required reactivation and when it didn't. However, each time it did, the phone in activation worked fine. A bit of a pain to do, but it always worked.

Hope this helps,

BW

[atomcc]

Hi,

First of all, thank you for your swift reply and apologize for my delayed one.

Thank you very much!

I could either - restore to the same SSD or to a HDD I already have.

One question - it seems Acronis has a bunch of products out there and not sure which one to buy.

Also, when making a backup of the SSD, am I creating a clone, that would get put back on a re-partitioned drive? Wouldn't restoring the backup just repartition the drive back to the old configuration.

I thought I knew my stuff about partitions and formatted partitions and cloning disks but evidently I don't.

From your answer, it seems that you create the partition and then restore the OS?

Thanks again for your response.
JM

[BW37]

I've done some digging before replying so as not to mislead you and/or (hopefully) not completely embarrass myself It's been over a year since I was working with this stuff so I'm a bit rusty - a once every 30 years move interfered from which I'm still digging out .

It appears that the latest versions of Acronis do not "support" WinXP. I assume this means that they cannot run on it. I'm not sure it means that they could not somehow be used to create XP bootable discs/partitions while running on a Win 7-10,11 system. I just don't know. They have expanded the features and functions greatly to include LOTS of stuff that has little to do with cloning and the like.

My latest version of Acronis is 2016 which I use mostly for back-up of my Win7&10 systems. I believe it does run on XP but even it is a big bloated thing that I actually don't like it much, especially it's "improved" interface which mostly just hides the things I need... For the work I've done with XP capture systems, I am still using Acronis 2010 which less bloated with a more logical (to me) interface. Note that Acronis 10 is not compatible with Win10.

I see used copies of Acronis 2010 listed at Amazon for ~25$. You need a text string "key" to make them work so be a bit wary. On Ebay there a few offered but for ~$60. Crazy. It's also available from software download sites, but that seems risky these days. They used to package a "free" version with upgrade HDD's which is where I started using it back in the dark ages. I see I have a copy, hmmm....

Another option might be Macrium Reflect which has a free version and says it's compatible with XP. I've used it to do some things that Acronis cannot like adjusting the size of partitions being created on new media. Sadly, it's pretty big and slow to load, but it does work well.

You really only need the basics: the ability to create an image/clone and install it on a pre-partitioned disc.

Whatever you decide to use, it should allow you to create an "image" of the OS existing partition and then use this image to reinstall a bootable version of that OS to a different physical media. When making the back-up, Acronis has options to back up "folders and files" or to back up partitions as "images". If I understand it, the "images" will keep the all of the information/data needed to create new bootable partitions. The files and folders options will not. You can also make back-ups of entire disks with multiple partitions, etc. You shouldn't have to use this capability, at least for now. This is where Reflect is especially useful since newer OS's need and create multiple partitions. XP needs just one.

Here's the users guide to Acronis 10. Hopefully, it will provide something useful.

BW

"From your answer, it seems that you create the partition and then restore the OS?"

Yes, you will partition the SSD on a Win 7 or 10 system and then restore/install the OS from the image without repartitioning the drive. This will keep the correct alignment. For an HDD it should not matter. The partition created has to be XP compatible, etc.

[atomcc]

Hi,

Yet again, thank you very much for your research.

I decided that since - if it didn't work - I would just reinstall Windows XP had gotten the ATI drivers and capture working thanks to a utility named " Plutonium_xp_81.exe" after I had figured out the partition alignment issue.

I read about GParted and created a boot disc based off of their gparted-live-1.3.1-1-i686.iso and followed the directions on this page:

https://lifehacker.com/speed-up-your...itions-5837769

Quote:

Start up Gparted and find your SSD in the upper-right dropdown menu. Select it, and click on your first partition in the menu. Hit the Resize/Move button in the toolbar. Change the "Free Space Preceding" box to 2MB, uncheck "Round to Cylinders", and hit "Resize/Move". (If you're using a newer live CD, check the "MiB" box). Hit Apply once and let it do its thing.

Now hit Resize/Move again, and change the "Free Space Preceding" box to 1MB. Uncheck "Round to Cylinders" again, hit Resize/Move, then click Apply. Now your drive will be aligned to exactly 2048 blocks after the beginning of the disk, which allows for optimal SSD performance. Note that if you have multiple partitions on your SSD, you'll need to repeat this process for each partition, not just the first one on the disk.

chkdsk ran while rebooting but everything seems to be up and running.

I opened Msinfo32 and my Partition Starting Offset is 1Mb (1 048 576 bytes) so it should be aligned now!

Thanks again for you assistance! Let me know if there's anything else to worry about! I know it doesn't have TRIM but there's probably a Samsung utility for that.

Cheers,
JM