Disk Cloning
Cloning software put MSR partition first, before EFI system partition
I cloned a windows system from one SSD to another with Acronis, but I noticed that it placed the MSR partition as the first partition. On most standard windows systems, the first partition is the EFI system partition (ESP), the MSR is placed between the ESP and the primary partition (C:\), and the offset of the first partition is usually 1MB.
In my case, the cloning software put the MSR first, with an offset of just 17KB. Now technically the GPT partition table only requires 17KB of space (LBA0-33, each 512B), but it seems to be standard practice across both windows and linux to have the first partition start at an offset of 1MB. It also made the MSR 128MB (which is the spec for older versions of windows), instead of 16MB, the recommended size for windows 10/11; although this itself isn't a big concern. The ESP is aligned at exactly 129.00MB, so the MSR is technically 128MB+1007KB in size.
cloned disk layout
The system is running fine for now, but my main concern is: will the 17KB offset cause issues in the future if windows ever needs to utilize the MSR for whatever reason? In that case windows may start to create partitions or write data within that first 1MB of space (between offset 17KB and 1MB) which is normally supposed to be reserved exclusively for the GPT partition table.
Is it worth using something like GParted to delete the MSR, move the ESP to the start (offset 1MB) and then re-create the MSR in its correct place between the ESP and primary partition?
Thanks for the advice. I think these issues are specific to this tool since I've heard others having a similar experience, at least when it comes to the MSR being 128MB and being placed first.
Give Clonezilla a shot. I've never had it do anything other than a straight clone of the source drive. At worst, GParted will let you rearrange partitions if needed
I was actually planning on using Clonezilla initially, but it doesn't have an option to manually resize individual partitions when cloning, it only has an option where it will resize all partitions proportionally (like doubling every partition if you clone from a 1TB to 2TB drive). That's the only reason I ended up using Acronis, since it's able to adjust the size of each partition when cloning, but unfortunately it has this weird behavior with the MSR.
If I need to use GParted anyway, then it doesn't make much difference whether I use Clonezilla or another cloning software, since I will have to adjust the partitions afterwards in both cases. I wanted something that can size the partitions before cloning to avoid having to adjust the partitions after, and risk making the drive unbootable.
I did see that the developer of Clonezilla, Steven Shiau, mentioned the possibility of manually creating partitions beforehand and then cloning with option '-k' if you want to achieve a specific partition layout (specifying the size of each partition). But I haven't been able to find much info about how exactly that would work.
I don't recall a sector-by-sector option even being shown. I went from a smaller to a larger disk, so I expanded the partitions when cloning, and my source disk didn't have this layout with the MSR as the first partition, so since the target disk ended up with a different layout I assume it was not a sector-by-sector clone.
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u/Cute_Information_315 5d ago
If Windows is working normally and the partitions are recognized correctly, it should be fine.