On Sat, 23 Jul 2016 12:18:29 -0400, 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?

Decent backup software, partitions, especially FAT32, aren't an issue.
That would be a backup image that's seeing subsequent disk
manipulations, after its creation, and a minor discrepancy for, say
were it resizing within a same sector/cluster ordering, when the
backup routine is again initiated to see the difference.

Then again, I may be spoilt...

Norton's (and later Symantec) back-up tools have distinguished for
that discrepancy for quite some time -- and quite well for what they
actually do..."ghosting" as it goes by their moniker. Also,
"optimizing" a format, per se, is fitted for some pretty narrow
straits: special circumstances for newer SDD drives and speed
constraints related the physics of, otherwise, a spinning platter. A
file optimization, consequently, is a different flavored animal and
usually is treated as such, with a different set of tools than those
used within normal considerations for the creation, format and
definitions permitted partitions. The concept goes: initially build
your image of the OS, the way you like it, on a partition with,
hopefully, the same forethought for longevity in its placement;- a
file optimization is then a discrete process and to be so placed
within a part of an order employed by special utilities relating to
the build stage;- the final "dumbly consecutive" binary-sector image
restore, then, will faithfully account for that accomplishment and
placement.