1 Topic by Algy7

  • Algy7
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  • Registered: 2012-01-17
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Topic: Newbie Question: Need help to create exact copy of root partition

Hi, I am stuggeling for more than 2 days now trying tot create an exact copy of my win7SP1 root partition.
Harddisk is a WDC WD5000 disk, 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 60801 cylinders, 976773168 sectors, 512b.
OS was WinXP, migrated to Windows 7 Family Pack upgrade.
Shrunk the disk from 500 GiB to 50 GiB. Asked for 51200 MiB, Got 51201 MiB, made up of 104859585 sectors.

Every effort to create an exact copy of this first partition into unallocated space results in a partition with slightly more sectors. I tried creating a new partition, copy/paste the root partition. Did it in the primary and the secondary disk partition. But cannot figure out how to end up with the exact same number of sectors. Partly because Gparted only asks for the number of MiBs and not the number of sectors. And/or my knowledge of this fields is too limited.

The number of sectors being not equal, my Clonezilla tool refused to clone the root partition into the new one, viceversa.

2 Reply by gedakc

  • gedakc
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  • Registered: 2007-11-30
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Re: Newbie Question: Need help to create exact copy of root partition

Windows XP often used Cylinder alignment.  Hence when you try to resize the partition, try using "Align to Cylinder".

If this does not work, then you can investigate command line tools, such as fdisk or parted, to achieve sector level accuracy.