Does image restore use formatting of newly formatted drive or does it overwrite new formatting with old one?

The simple answer that may not tell all is that TI puts back the old format since the format is nothing more than the file structure. Now, the question is what happens to any bad-block information because unless you do a true sector backup of every sector on the HD rather than just in-use sectors (normal for the usual imaging) TI does not necessarily put everything back in exactly the same sector address it came from. This is why TI only works with various filesystems since it has to understand something about the structure.

The other fact is that if you make an image of a partition that has bad-blocks which have been remapped to spare sectors, you can get rid of the bad-block table by just resizing the partition by even a very small amount which you would want to do if your replaced the disk with a new one. This implies that TI has the bad-block table or access to it.

So if I had a disk with bad-blocks I'd restore the image then immediately run chkdsk X: /r where X is the drive letter of the partition in question. This will do a fix of the file structure if necessary (the /f option) and also do a read-check of the entire partition surface.

My usual comment is that if I got another report of more bad-blocks I'd junk the drive because once the heads come down causing particles to be floating around inside or damaging the head such that its flying characteristics are compromised there is strong liklihood the end is coming.

I'd be interested in hearing Acronis' view on the bad-block issue.

Thanks for the response.

I have already told the client that even if i repair the drive, it should be replaced with a new drive asap for the same reasons you expressed - a drive with problems will only get worse.