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Can my boot HD have a data partition?

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With all the images I've created I always use Full backup, never incremental. So when I restore it wipes the C drive and replaces it with the boot drive from the image.

 

I have a 2T HD that is partitioned with 3 partitions.

1 - system reserved - 350MG

2 - boot - 100 GIG

3 - data - 1900 Gig

I want this to be a dual boot HD with my 250 Gig main boot HD. My main boot 250 gig HD is pretty lean. I'm only using about 56 gig, so it has almost 200 gig in free space. 

When I use an Acronis image I made of my 250 gig boot HD and restore it to my 2T HD. It destroys all 3 partitions and creates a 2 partition HD -  system reserved and OS.

Is there a way to have Acronis allow me to have a data partition on this boot HD? Or is it always going to comletely take over a HD and delete the entire HD during a restore?

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If you are imaging just the two partitions, when you recover, you need restore each partition manually. If not, it will format the entire drive and set the second partition to use all of the remaining available space.

if possible, you may want to consider using an $80 Samsung evo 850 250gb ssd for your OS and your other drive for data. This will give you a huge performance boost with apps, booting and shutdown. It will also prevent you from accidentally wiping out your data partition during a recovery down the road. For $80, the benefits are well worth it if you can spring for the setup and can have 2 drives installed. If you're limited to one internal drive then you could use a external adapter for the large drive.