Recovering the NTFS (System reserved partition)???
Hi,
My 120 GB SSD just crasched and I now want to restore it. My new SSD is of the same brand Corsair but bigger, 240 GB.
I have made a full disc image and I can boot from the Bootable Media I made on a USB stick. I am running Acronis True Image Home 2012 on a Windows 7 - 64 PC.
BUT when I come to the screen "What to recover" I become a bit unsure... I have been told that IF recovering to a larger disc and IF the "System Reserved partition" is present, I should FIRST recover the "NTFS (System Reserved Partition)". Then reboot and SECONDLY recover the "MBR and Track 0", and FINALLY recover my old C-drive, which is called "NTFS (Unlabeled) (C:) on my image... Is this correct? (I do not know, in fact, if I have to reboot in between the three restoring phases???)
The second thing I am not sure how to actually accomplish, is that I have also been told that WHEN RESTORING THE SYSTEM RESERVED PARTITION I should leave 1 MB BEFORE of free space ? Is this correct?
But when I try to accomplish this under the last window in ATIH "Settings of Partition 1-1" and clicking "Change default" under Partition size (where it now says "Free space before: 0 bytes") I do not really understand how to change these settings correctly to get 1 MB of free space before.
Because when I do change the "Before"-setting, the "Free space after" also changes from 0 (which was the default setting) to 2.012 GB. So after having changed the "Free space before" to 1MB I am left with the following: "Partition size: 221.5 GB, Free space before: 1MB, Free space after: 2.012 GB" on the brand new 240GB Corsair SSD. Is this correct?
In the last Summary window, before clicking the "Proceed-button", it now says that ATIH will perform TWO operations:
1. Deleting partition with drive letter D: (I do not know why it suddenly got the D: letter, because I already have a second hard drive with drive letter D: which now seemed to have gotten drive letter E:)... Anyway, the disc size (223.5 GB) seem to indicate that it is the right drive.
2. Recovering partition to this new D: drive the System Reserved Partition of size 0.098 GB to the 221.5 GB space which is "empty" I guess...
Hopefully all above is correct, and I can just hit the "Proceed" key and hold my breath! In any other case, I would be very grateful for suggestions on how to do it differently!
Thanks a lot, James!!
Now I think I understand what is written in the manual and in several other posts much better!
So, my current understanding is as follows (hopefully a little less confused!).
1. First recover the System Reserved Partition 100 MB to the new drive, leaving 1MB BEFORE the new location of the System Reserved Partition and sized to the same, i.e. 100 MB.
2. Next, restore the actual System part, in my case system files and program files occupying 111 GB on the "old" SSD. No space before and no space after, meaning that it will be placed AFTER the hidden System Reserved Partition and occypying the rest of the disk, i.e. what has not yet been allocated as the target.
3. Proceed to restore the MBR and Track 0.
In all the cases I take it that it would be a good measure to validate the image file before proceeding with the actual restore, right?
I how now restored the image to the new, larger SSD. However the boot process asked me to boot from the Windows 7 installation CD and choose "Repair" as it could not boot with the current instllation. So I did a repair with the Systproblems with the system files, and then rebooted once more and now into the system on the new SSD, and it looks allright. As this is a new SSD, is there anything more I should do in order to get the SSD running as smoothly and reliably as possible?
Did you correctly mark the restore System Reserved as active?
The first thing to do is to verify alignment.
Launch msinfo32.exe. Choose components, hardware, disks.
At the bottom of each partition paragraph there is an offset number. This number needs to be divisible by 4096.
Check this post for other tweaks: http://forum.acronis.com/forum/34509#comment-106890
Thanks Pat!
Yes, I did check that the System Reserved Partition was marked as Active, and I have also veryfired this afterwards by right clicking "Computer" in the Start menu and then selecting Manage -> Storage -> Disk Management. I now have my Disk 0 (which is the new SSD) with two partions. The first being the System Reserved Partition of 100MB, indicated as Healthy, System, Active and Primary, followed by the C: partition which takes up the rest of the space and marked as Healthy, System, Boot, Primary, Page File, Crash dump.
And I have also checked with the msinfo32.exe that the offset number is indeed divisible by 4096, and I have veryfied that TRIM is activated by executing the command "fsutil behavior DisableDeleteNotify" and verifying that the result was "0".
But I do not know why initially I had to repair the disk, but after that it seems to work just fine, so I keep my fingers crossed!
By the way, I do wish that ATIH had a wizard with some of the most common scenarios that could walk me through these steps. It would be much easier for someone like me to first choose from a list of scenarios like: Recovering to a new blank SSD and then followed by some other relevant questions. The program then could walk me through the above steps starting with the recovery of the System Reserved Partition, suggesting to offset it 1MB, followed with the C: partition and finishing off by restoring the MBR and Track 0.
Wading through all the questions on these forums I could easily pick out some of the most often asked questions and building on these include some easy to use scenarios which should be included in a future ATIH upgrade...