John B. Smith wrote:
I have the ambition to align my main C: (XP) partition. It is on a
500gig hard drive partitioned in half for XP and Win7. Msinfo.exe says
that the Partition Offset for the XP partition is NOT divisible by
4096. AOMEI promises to align the partition and Optimize it, and I'd
like to try, if only I KNEW I could safely recover a backup if things
went south. I have a couple image backup restorers which I'm pretty
sure wouldn't work if AOMEI tampers with the partitioning. I think
what WOULD work a rescue is COPYING the files back onto the
'Optimized' partition if push comes to shove. My Easeus backup, when
booted from a CD will not do this. My ancient Drive Image 7 will, and
rewrite the MBR if I desire. So I'm here to pick some brains and MAYBE
get scared off enough to leave well enough alone if that's the
consensus. Thoughts?

You can never be too rich, or have too many backups.

Macrium Reflect Free, you can back up as your mixed
alignment image. Then, during Restore to the SSD, re-align
the partition on the fly.

In the filmstrip here, about a bit past the middle of
the strip, there is "Partition Properties". And there,
you can select 1MB alignment if you want. The one megabyte
alignment was invented by Microsoft, as their solution
to doing the best job possible for Flash Memory on
SSDs. Using 4KB alignment (not an OS feature), is of
usage for HDDs with 512e emulation. It makes them
perform a bit better. But 1MB alignment handles both
cases at the same time, doing a good job on a HDD with
internal 4K sectors, as well as SSDs with large
power-of-two flash memory pages.

https://s9.postimg.org/6mko7k7m5/Macrium_Restore_CD.gif

The process is not cosmetically perfect, but it is
functionally correct. While not shown in the example,
when I did a four-partition disk, there were "gaps"
between partitions. So it's not as suave as a real
Partition Manager. But considering it is free (i.e.
cheaper than a copy of the Paragon Alignment Tool),
it's a good deal.

http://www.macrium.com/reflectfree.aspx

The download process consists of:

A stub downloader program
Download main program
Download WinPE5 for making the Rescue CD

During the install, the WinPE5 is re-packed and
stored somewhere on C: . You make the Rescue CD,
in case you ever need to boot the CD, and overwrite
your entire OS disk from a backup. The Rescue CD,
while it is being prepared, can have NIC drivers
added. And that raises the possibility of using
file sharing for the backup. In my experience, it
doesn't always work, so you should always have
some facility on hand for connecting the backup
drive, locally to the machine. Like, a USB drive
enclosure, or an available bay with SATA port in
your tower. The WinPE5 should have some USB3
drivers.

Paul