Recovering a Windows 7 unbootable system drive & migrating the OS to an SSD drive
Hello, I think this question might be answered in this forum but I can't seem to find an answer by searching the forum. I registered the trial version of Backup & Recovery to do a few tasks, they are, in order of urgency: recover an unbootable Win 7 system drive, migrate the Win 7 OS to a new SSD system drive, and keep backups of the new system drive that are recoverable both for files/directories and the entire drive image.
1) Recover my Win 7 system hard drive that is now unbootable (WD Velociraptor 80Gb). What I did was try to migrate the OS to a new SSD drive with other backup and recovery software (their support is unresponsive so I am forced to abandon the software). I made a bit-by-bit image of the system drive (or so I thought) on an external USB 3.0 drive (3Tb Seagate GoFlex).
Note: I installed Acronis Backup & Recovery to and I am now operating under Windows XP SP3 which is installed on a the original hard drive that came with the PC (150 Gb WD Raptor in a Dell XPS720). I have a dual-boot system that can boot into either XP on the original drive or Win 7 on the second drive.
I quick formatted the new SSD drive under Win 7, then I tried to migrate the image to a new SSD drive (OCZ Vertex 2 120Gb) from within Win 7 on the system drive, and at some point the operation failed and I had to reboot the system drive. It was now unbootable and after hours of searching and trying to recover the system drive I have had no luck. From what I can tell the boot directory has been removed from the system drive (I have given up trying to find out why this happened). I took some advice from the Experts Exchange website and am trying Backup & Recover 11 to get this accomplished.
This may or may not be important but I cannot even see the unbootable Win 7 drive when I boot up in the Win 7 recovery tool unless the XP drive is enabled AND the new SSD is disconnected.
2). As stated above, I would like to migrate the OS to the new SSD drive. Whether it has been recovered and the system drive is now bootable or not is irrelevant - I don't care about the Win 7 OS on the second drive, but I do want to use it as a storage drive (in other words mount the drive to access just the data on it). I can see and access the Win 7 system drive under XP so that is not an issue. Also, I can recover the system drive and migrate the OS to the new drive or I can just restore the OS to the SSD drive and not have the Win 7 drive bootable (see above).
It is important to note that I installed the trial version under the XP system and I need to know that I can uninstall/reinstall it on the Win 7 drive if I can recover it as a system drive. Or, I suppose it might be irrelevant if I can recover & migrate the Win 7 drive from the XP drive without needing to boot into the Win 7 drive ever again.
3) I want to make sure that I can make a bit-by-bit image of the new Win 7 SSD system drive to the external USB drive such that the image can be used to recover the entire OS to the SSD drive or just to recover individual files/folders.
Whew, that was probably TMI!
So, can someone guide me how to use the software to do at least the first 2 items? I have no problem buying the license if I need it to migrate the Win 7 OS to the new SSD drive, but I want to make damned sure that I can do this since i have been burned by other software trial versions (crippleware that can't restore anything) that promise to do the same thing only to find out that it cannot after I paid for the trial version.
It would be very helpful to try this ASAP since I am an independent consultant and time is money, I have lost a lot of time this past week, and besides consultants don't get vacations ;(
You can do me a huge favor and email me at tim_orerockon (gobbledegook inserted here for the spammers) at yahell com so I can get started ASAP! (ignore this if the forum notifies me of replies to my posts; I am not sure yet whether that happens)

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