Questions Regarding Recovery of System Partition ATIH2010
Hi, I had a few questions regarding the recovery of my system partition that I have backed up. I have read over Grover's helpful guides regarding recovery, but I couldn't find an exact match of my issue. I wanted to be absolutely aware of any possible issues.
At the current moment, I have the following (verified using W7 Disk Management):
1 Partition 240 GB SSD system drive (C:)
1 Partition 1 TB storage drive (D:) that has about 400 GB in free space
A .tib image of the system drive (C:) file currently located on my storage drive (D:)
I was wondering if I could restore my system backup onto my 1 TB drive's free space and take out my ssd from my pc due to issues I've been having with it. I am assuming I would have to convert a portion of the free space into 'unallocated space' first. I did this using Windows 7 Disk Management Tool which left me with about 160GB of free space and 240GB of unallocated space on D:.
My questions are as follows:
Would ATI properly turn this unallocated space into a partition prior to restoration of my system drive?
Would I have to turn the unallocated space into a 240GB partition first prior to restoration?
Is it safe to assume that the existing data on my D: would remain untouched as long as I use the unallocated space?
Do I have to restore the MBR And Track 0 or more specifically, would there be any issues regarding bootup that could occur afterwards? Some of the 'before' and 'after' settings of the partition resizing kind of confuses me. I am assuming both settings would be '0' as I am fine with a 240GB partition on my D: for the system.
Thanks.
Thank you for the detailed response, Grover.
Yeah, I figured that this wasn't the best course of action but more of a temporary measure to get my system up and running with what I had as soon as possible. I imagine I should really just get a large storage drive or external drive and use that purely for storage of images to minimize risk. Fortunately, I may have been a bit hasty in my decision to do a restore as I found the reasons behind the intermittent freezing on my ssd.
If you do what you plan, then what you would need to do would be create a new partition at the beginning of the 1 tb disk and make sure the free space before partition 1 is set to the "1 mb of free space before".
For clarity sake and in case of future restores, I thought that partitions could only be made after the existing partitions (using unused cylinders of the drive). Or would ATIH 'reorder' the partitions accordingly to properly setup the new system partition. while pushing the existing one back.
Other than that, I think I have a general idea of what to do if I ever go this route. Thanks again for the help.
The target partition will already exist so the restore will just restore the backup into the existing partition--just the same it does on a normal restore into an existing system.
My point is that the the restore into the 1tb has to be into the first partition Even if you have to make a end partiton and move all the old data from the old existing partition into the new partiition. In other words, all the data is moved into the new 2nd part so the first partition is empty to receive a restore.
Ah, I understand now. I guess I just kept incorrectly assuming I could use a second partition for the restore, but I have to move the existing data since it occupies that first (currently, 'only') partition space.
Thanks, Grover -- I should be all set at this point.