Is it possible to do cloning between 512 bytes/sector HDD and Seagate Momentus XT 500GB vice versa?

[Micro-Dona]

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Right now I am having Toshiba Satellite A660 powered by Windows 7 x64 bit. This particular laptop is having 640GB Toshiba MK6465GSX HDD. Few days back I purchased Seagate Momentus XT 500GB hard drive which is having Advanced Format. I find out that Toshiba HDD has 512 bytes/sector has nothing like Advanced Format.

Now main thing is that I am looking to use Momentus XT to make bootable clone of my laptop hard drive. Momentus XT supposed to be enclosure with that particular interface to the Dell laptop though eSATA. Once I would done with cloning I would replace laptop hard drive with Momentus XT to get higher performance. I am planning to use Toshiba HDD as an external to do cloning on the weekly basis. In case there will be something wrong with Momentus XT then I would replace the same with Toshiba HDD. Would I get any issue when I clone 512 byte/sector HDD to AF Momentus XT?

Once AF Momentus XT would become as an internal drive will I get any issue cloning AF Momentus XT to 512 byte/sector Toshiba HDD?

[fflygirl]

After going through problem of yours I recommend that one should not do cloning at all. you will require lots of points to be consider and you might face lots of issue while doing the same. the best thing which I can tell you that you should not do cloning rather than that you should do a fresh install with the updated drivers.

[phunsuk]

Make sure that the original partition should not be corrupted. Then only it would be quite easy to clone to new MXT drive. you should be careful if it is not having SD24 or SD25 firmware’s. If it is having SD24 or SD25 firmware’s then you will need to update the same with SD28 and after that you have to perform a full erase so that you can clear the SSD. Momentus XT 500 GB (model ST95005620AS) is not a 4K sector drive rather than it is having 512 Byte sectors. Whereas MXT 750 GB hard drive is having physical 4K sectors. But still it is necessary to align to 4K as you are having SSD component and it works fine with 4K sectors.

[Mallory c]

If you are having non-aligned partitions then you have to see that partition should have offset of 32256 bytes. There should be offset of the multiple of 512 bytes rather than that of 4096 bytes. Also partition should begin with LBA=63 and you should left pervious LBA for an offset. You can also make use of Acronis True Image in order to create image file of the partition. After that you will be able to recover partition from the image of the new drive. you should begin with setting offset manually. You should see that you are recovering C: drive first after that do the same with the rest of the partition. There will not be any issue whether old drive with having 512-byte physical sectors is residing into the alignment of 4K or not.

[chuck28]

Well according to me partition supposed to be irrelevant into the situation of yours. it could be the slowest part of the eSATA.

[Yistor]

In terms of performance of view align with the offset in the multiple of 4096 bytes if below mentioned conditions are meeting.

1. First of all you are using SSD and written pages should be of 4 KB in size. The blocks could be much larger.
2. The HDD should be having 4 KB physical sectors where as NTFS is making use of 4 KB logical addressing..
   
3. It is recommend to align 4K irrespective of system which you are having.

[Roey]

In case original drive which you are having partition of 4K then you will not require to worry about. Clone would simply track of 4K alignment. You will be able to check the same once you have boot from MXT by using msinfo32 command whether you have kept any alignment or not.