Beginner Questions About What parts of my disk to image and others
Hi all,
I started hearing some telltale noises from my 750 GB Seagate Barracuda HDD so I picked up ATI Home 2010. I bought an identical HDD, but I'm a bit stumped on what to do next. I want to simply image my current drive and apply it to the new drive. I have the following questions that I can't seem to find answers to in the user guide:
1. Do I need to format the new drive before I can apply an image to it?
2. Do I need to install windows on the new drive before I can apply an image to it?
3. When I installed Windows 7 on my drive, it seems to have created two partitions. (See image below) It seems that Windows created a "system reserved" partition as well as the standard active primary partition which it calls C:\. If I just format the new drive before applying an image, I won't be creating a system reserved partition, which leads me to think that if I want to apply the image most accurately, I should install windows first to generate the necessary partitions (named correctly as well) to later apply the image. How much does this formatting play into applying the image? What should I do here? (You can see the unallocated space of the new unformatted drive)
4. I have about 100 GB of data and applications (including the OS) that I backed up as a .tib file. The .tib file is about 45 GB. Is it compressed? Will it rebuild to the complete drive? Does that .tib only include the "C" partition?
5. To back up bit for bit I need an extra 750 BG of space, right? I don't think I want to do that.
As you can see I have several questions. I appreciate anything you can clarify for me.
Thanks.

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Wow. It seems I need to get to work.
Grover, thanks very much for your excellent and detailed reply. I'll start reading tonight.
RE: your p.s. - Are you suggesting updated firmaware might be helpful to my current HDD, or are you saying I should update the firmware before (or after) the image restore to the new drive?
Thanks again.
Dan
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The disk is an issue within itself. It it qualifies for a firmware update (as listed at the Seagate site), then I would apply the update. It may or may not help your problem with the disk. I would certainly replace it but you may get some additional life from it as a data disk, etc. Of course, if you can return it under warranty, then return it.
If your new replacement qualifies for an update, I would do it first before restoring your archive.
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