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Dying drive/Backup done/extract files

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OK, first I run with the local volunteer rescue squad and our crewroom computer has a fast dying hard drive. I took the drive out and home to make a fast backup which appears to have captured the hidden partition as well. For the record this system has never had a backup done that I'm aware of and after the system is fully restored it will have Acronis 2016 installed and scheduled for regular backups. SW already ordered from Amazon.

So what I need to find out now is if it is possible to extract the files from the backup to a temporary hard drive that I have at home and can I use the USB docking station to clone or extract these files? There are sensitive patient files that are needed for pending reports so I need to get these asap. It will be the end of the week before all is ready and I'm out of town for the following two weeks so time is a bit critical.

Is there any reason I can't clone a temporary spare drive I have or extract the backup to the drive to get the needed files? If so what is the best approach? I've owned various versions of True Image dating back about 7-8 years but haven't had to restore a disc and have never tried much less from a file for another system for another system. I have cloned several SSD drives for my systems and that worked well. When I went through this process of cloning using the two drives mounted in the USB hard drive docking station I got a message that the drive would not be bootable from BIOS and I think that means that while it's in the docking station but not sure. If I'm right it should boot when installed back into the computer that it came from, right?

Any assistance is greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Steve

svrs.org

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Hello Steve,

First point here is to ensure that you have taken an entire disk backup of the dying hard drive if you want to try to restore this on to a different / new hard drive.  Any hidden partitions may be needed to ensure a successful boot in the original system depending on what they hold.

Once you have the backup image then you should be able to explore this and extract any files / folders as needed provided you have ATIH 2016 installed on the system where you are accessing the backup image.

You could also restore the backup image on to a temporary spare drive if you have one of equivalent or greater capacity.  This would be the same as doing a clone from the original drive providing that your restore the entire disk with all partitions to the spare drive.  The drive will only be bootable when installed back into the original system in the same place where the dying drive was removed from.  It also needs to be the same type of drive as the dying drive, i.e. both IDE or both SATA drives, you cannot mix these and expect it to boot.

Windows imposes restrictions on the ability to boot drives from USB connected media such as docking stations / caddies etc.

If needed you can buy dedicated dual dock devices which can clone hard drives offline from any computer - have a search on Amazon.