Free System Disk Imaging Software w/ Partition Alignment for Windows 98 SSD. \ VOGONS

Free System Disk Imaging Software w/ Partition Alignment for Windows 98 SSD.

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First post, by porksmuggler

Posted on 2024-04-26, 15:16

porksmuggler Offline

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Posts: 11
Joined: 2024-04-16, 20:01

I'm looking for an all in one solution, but Macrium, Aomei, etc. have all gone paid for system drive cloning / imaging I believe. I demoed the latest MiniTool version, and its the same. Phil has an older version of it on his site, but I haven't demoed it to see if it does all of the above. I read Clonezilla may not preserve alignment.

So what's the best option? Any free / open source software to do it all, or should I just make a simple copy of all files, system / hidden included, then use something like BootIce to restore the MBR, PBR. Or should I just fdisk / format the new drive as normal, align with MiniTool 9, then copy the backed up files over.

Reply 1 of 2, by Warlord

Posted on 2024-04-28, 02:26

Warlord Offline

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Posts: 2538
Joined: 2018-02-02, 05:14

last time I used Active @ Partition Manager 2.6 Free version On XP to prep a drive. Similar to Disk Part on Win 7 and 2003 Server it can align fat 32 partitions to to sector offset 2048 - 4096 properly. It seems to be almost a clone in functionality to Disk Part from 2003 server and win 7, but with a GUI and no partition size limitations Theres a TRIM for DOS thats free now from rloew.
"I tested other programs such as: MiniTool Partition Wizard Home, GParted LiveCD, Acronis Disk Director but these programs round the size and do not allow to create exactly 4096MB" , Beta12

Source
https://www.betaarchive.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=39080

Archive
https://web.archive.org/web/20130427123647/ht … nFree-Setup.exe

Reply 2 of 2, by porksmuggler

Posted on 2024-04-28, 14:09

porksmuggler Offline

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Rank: Newbie
Posts: 11
Joined: 2024-04-16, 20:01

Thank you for the reply, another company to check out. I wouldn't mind paying for a new version since I'm aligning and cloning on a modern system repeatedly for testing, but they all want annual or quarterly subscriptions, which is a step too far.

MiniTool 9.1 from Phil's site did actually do all of the above I believe. I was able to clone the SSD (even attached externally via usb) to an unformatted flash drive, with partition resize even. It aligns to "1 MB" which is a bit vague as to not mention 1024 KB, but the alignment checked out in AS-SSD if that method is to be trusted.

The flash drive oddly doesn't appear in the drive list in modern Windows after the process, but appears in Disk Manager, diskpart, and MiniTool, so that's acceptable.

I haven't tried rloew's (RIP) TRIM, I've just been reformatting NTFS between tests, and running defrag /L /U /V since the SSD is easier to attach via usb.

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