How do shifted sectors affect Windows? (OS partition is shifted)

[Vishera]

Long story short:

I made a mistake during a restore from a backup and all of the partitions are shifted to different sectors.

 

How does it affect Windows? (The OS drive was the one shifted)

 

Thanks in advance

[WereCatf]

57 minutes ago, Vishera said:

How does it affect Windows? (The OS drive was the one shifted)

As long as the partition-table points correctly to the now-shifted locations, it'll work. That said, if the drive is an advanced-format drive, ie. it uses 4K sectors instead of 512 bytes, and the new, shifted location isn't on a 4K-boundary, it'll reduce the drive's performance quite a bit.

[Vishera]

31 minutes ago, WereCatf said:

As long as the partition-table points correctly to the now-shifted locations, it'll work. That said, if the drive is an advanced-format drive, ie. it uses 4K sectors instead of 512 bytes, and the new, shifted location isn't on a 4K-boundary, it'll reduce the drive's performance quite a bit.

I am using the drive right now,it booted with no problems into windows,

However drive activity is more than the usual.

How do i know if my drive is advanced-format drive?

 

Edit: Yep,It is an advanced-format drive.

[Vishera]

37 minutes ago, WereCatf said:

That said, if the drive is an advanced-format drive, ie. it uses 4K sectors instead of 512 bytes, and the new, shifted location isn't on a 4K-boundary, it'll reduce the drive's performance quite a bit.

How do i know that it happened?

[WereCatf]

12 minutes ago, Vishera said:

How do i know that it happened?

Well, is the starting-sector of the partition divisible by 4096?

 

Here's a quick link to show how to check: https://www.reneelab.com/4k-alignment-introduction.html#tab-1519633483-1-0

[Vishera]

3 minutes ago, WereCatf said:

Well, is the starting-sector of the partition divisible by 4096?

Before shifting:

 

After shifting:

 

[WereCatf]

6 minutes ago, Vishera said:

Before shifting

208845 isn't divisible by 4096, so no, it's not aligned correctly. Interestingly, it wasn't correctly aligned even before you messed things up, either. You need to either use some tool to move the partition a little so it's correctly aligned or you'll need to just format the drive and do the partitions from scratch. (The Windows 10 - installer does automatically align to 4K)

 

You could make e.g. a bootable Ubuntu USB-stick (ie. download Rufus, download Ubuntu ISO-image, use Rufus to make a bootable USB-stick from the ISO-image) and then use GParted inside Ubuntu to move the partition so the starting-sector is divisible by 4096. Or use some other tool, I dunno. I haven't needed to mess around with alignment-stuff in a decade, so I'm not up-to-date on what tools there exist for it now.

[Vishera]

3 minutes ago, WereCatf said:

208845 isn't divisible by 4096, so no, it's not aligned correctly. Interestingly, it wasn't correctly aligned even before you messed things up, either.

That's odd,It was that way ever since i installed Windows on the drive.

so... How likely is it that the drive will perform differently than before?

10 minutes ago, WereCatf said:

You need to either use some tool to move the partition a little so it's correctly aligned or you'll need to just format the drive and do the partitions from scratch.

 

You could make e.g. a bootable Ubuntu USB-stick (ie. download Rufus, download Ubuntu ISO-image, use Rufus to make a bootable USB-stick from the ISO-image) and then use GParted inside Ubuntu to move the partition so the starting-sector is divisible by 4096. Or use some other tool, I dunno. I haven't needed to mess around with alignment-stuff in a decade, so I'm not up-to-date on what tools there exist for it now.

Thanks for the tip,I already have a bootable USB drive for emergencies with GParted on it

[WereCatf]

2 minutes ago, Vishera said:

That's odd,It was that way ever since i installed Windows on the drive.

so... How likely is it that the drive will perform differently than before?

Since it was misaligned already before, it shouldn't perform differently. Obviously, it would be a good idea to align it correctly anyways.

 

3 minutes ago, Vishera said:

Thanks for the tip,I already have a bootable USB drive for emergencies with GParted on it

Good man! Or woman, I dunno. Anyways, always good to have such around

[Vishera]

Just now, WereCatf said:

Since it was misaligned already before, it shouldn't perform differently. Obviously, it would be a good idea to align it correctly anyways.

 

Good man! Or woman, I dunno. Anyways, always good to have such around

Thanks for the help 

much appreciated!