Acronis Backup for Windows Server - User Guide - Manual (Page 30)

30 Copyright © Acronis International GmbH, 2002-2014
Acronis Backup includes a handy disk management utility which enables you to perform the above
operations both under the operating system and on bare metal. To find out more about Acronis Disk
Director Lite, see the Disk management (p. 177) section.
3.8 Support for Advanced Format (4K-sector) hard disks
Acronis Backup can back up hard disks with a sector size of 4 KB (known as Advanced Format disks),
as well as traditional hard disks that have 512-byte sectors.
Acronis Backup can recover data from one disk to another as long as both disks have the same logical
sector size. (This is the sector size presented to the operating system.) Acronis Backup automatically
aligns the disk’s volumes (p. 112) if necessary. This way, the start of a cluster in the file system always
matches the start of a physical sector on the disk.
The disk management (p. 177) functionality of Acronis Backup is not available for disks with a 4-KB
logical sector size.
Determining the logical sector size
By disk specification
Development of the Advanced Format technology is coordinated by the International Disk Drive
Equipment and Materials Association (IDEMA). For more details, see
http://www.idema.org/?page_id=2.
In terms of the logical sector size, IDEMA specifies two types of Advanced Format disks:

512 Byte emulation (512e) disks have a 512-byte logical sector size. These disks are supported in
Windows starting with Windows Vista, and in modern Linux distributions. Microsoft and Western
Digital use the term “Advanced Format” exclusively for this type of disk.

4K native (4Kn) disks have a 4-KB logical sector size. Modern operating systems can store data on
these disks, but generally cannot boot from these disks. These disks are commonly external
drives with USB connection.
By running the appropriate command
To find out the logical sector size of a disk, do the following.
1. Make sure that the disk contains an NTFS volume.
2. Run the following command as an administrator, specifying the drive letter of the NTFS volume:
fsutil fsinfo ntfsinfo D:
3. Examine the value in the Bytes Per Sector line. For example, the output may be the following:
Bytes Per Sector : 512
3.9 Compatibility with encryption software
Acronis Backup fully retains its functionality when interacting with file-level encryption software.
Disk-level encryption software encrypts data on the fly. This is why data contained in the backup is
not encrypted. Disk-level encryption software often modifies system areas: boot records, or partition
tables, or file system tables. These factors affect disk-level backup and recovery, the ability of the
recovered system to boot and access to Acronis Secure Zone.
Under some conditions, Acronis Backup is compatible with the following disk-level encryption
software: