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Do I need to recover these too?

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I just got my son's laptop back from Acer after the 1TB hard drive failed and they put a new one in containing a new installation of Windows 10.

I successfully recovered the C: drive from my Acronis back-up to the new drive. The following partitions were also available for recovery:

  1. MBR and Track 0
  2. EFI System Partition Pri 100MB, used 52.43MB FAT32
  3. Recovery Partition Pri 500MB, Used 333.3 MB NTFS

The laptop seems to be working OK. My question is: do I also need to recover the above 3 partitions?

Regards,

Andrew

 

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Nope, I wouldn't if all is working well.

MBR track 0 is the disk info. Some licensed software may be tied to the physical disk ID.  If you restore this, it should make the disk appear as the original.  Since you didn't though, check for any licensed software you have installed (to include Office and Windows) and make sure it is registered.  If not, you usually can just enter your license key again.

EFI System Parition is the Windows bootloader.  No need to restore this if your able to boot the OS already.  

Recovery Partition is either the manufacturer recovery parition and/or default Windows recovery partition.  This isn't required at all, but you probably already have one with your current install anyway so just leave it.  If you ever run into issues where you need to repair/recover Windows, you can use your original installation media.  

As you're running Windows 10 (I'm assuming home edition since it came with the laptop), you can use the Windows 10 Media Creation tool by Microsoft to create a Windows 10 installer .iso (to burn to a DVD) or a bootable USB flash drive.  This doubles not only as a way to install Windows "fresh" but can also be used to repair Windows (if it is repairable) too. When you download and run it, it will ask if you want to upgrade the current system or build an installer - don't upgrade, but do build the installer and hold onto it.  Every time there is a major Windows 10 "upgrade", you can use the media creation tool, to create a newer instance of the installer (if you want) so that you have the latest version if you ever want to install the OS "fresh".  Windows 10 is licensed to the hardware forever so you don't need a license key to do a fresh install on this particular computer anymore. 

 

 

Many thanks for your comprehensive answers Bobbo_3C0X1. I'll experiment further to fully check that it's all working as it should be, and hopefully that'll be it.

I'll create the Win 10 installer DVD.

Regards,

Andrew