Can restoring only C partition result in a usable drive system
I've searched and cannot find a post that addresses this particular C drive/partition issue. Seems deceptively easy so please be patient with me, TIA.
About a week ago, I used Malwarebytes to scan my system, and, in the end (won't bore you with details), it seems to have screwed up my system badly enough that I'd like to restore it to an earlier point before this mishap. I've got lots of potential choices to do this, but am not sure which would be best:
I am running Vista SP2. I know I can use a Windows restore point, but I'm wary of Windows save mechanisms as I've seen it screw things up worse than before.
I am using Acronis TI 2011 home. I made an ATI image about a week ago, before the scan/issue with Malwarebytes. However, I only imaged the C partition, not the D nor anything else that might've been on the drive at the time . (I only see C and D partitions on the drive.) The drive is in a laptop computer. I do have a media rescue disk.
Main Q is this: Is there a way I can use that image of the C partition only to create a working disk system? The options are numerous , but I'm unsure of what would work best:
1. I could make a whole-disk image of the drive currently, restore it to another notebook drive of the same size, and then overwrite the C partition with the saved C partition from about a week ago. (I know I could also just overwrite the current drive's C partition, but for safety's sake I don't want to risk it.) Would that work?
(I've also made a couple of interim images after my system starting evidencing problems, both c and d partitions included in those backup images, not clear to me that there would be a better plan using those images. I don't seem to have any copies of just imaging the whole disk, if that creates a drive copy that's different than just checking the 'c' and 'd'partitions, which ATI seems to do as default. I'm not completely familiar with whether I should've used ' disk mode, and whether that makes my regular backup image method - including both c and d drives in the image - is insufficient to restore a full, working system.)
2. From quite a while ago, I have some other, out-of-use hard drives that I either cloned the present drive to, or otherwise had a working drive system that worked with this computer. That is, I can plug one of those drives in to replace the current drive, and system boots, works fine, no problem. But I'm not sure that they're useful in solving this, or how, given that they're quite old in time.
Any help on this would be greatly appreciated. I probably will eventually try Windows system restore at an earlier point before this trouble developed, but I'd like to make sure I have other means at hand should that not work. And I better do it before the windows restore point system overwrites restore 'times' that occurred before the mishap.
3.Lastly, I see that I created a TI image backup that included both C and D drives about 15 days ago, well beore any problems occurred. I could use that, but I don't see any advantage in going back that far, as I would lose some input data since that time.
TIA so much.
In addition---
Click on my signature item 3 below and select item 3 within that link. Ths item 3 is an illustration of restoring a single partition.
Whether you can restore C only and still be bootable depends.
If current C is the active boot drive, then yes, a restore should be bootable.
But, it the system is booting off an active recovery partition (usually a non lettered partition 1), then you may also have to restore the recovery partition from an older backup.
Whether you need to restore D also will depend upon how D is tied to C. If your docs folder is on D, then a restore of C only may have some loose ends. You can always restore additional single files from other backup to achieve current.
Do the restore when booted from the user created TI Recovery CD.