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Sector-by-sector Restore - Does it work ?

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Congrats on an excellent product and rather good documentation. The doc says: " To make a sector-by-sector backup, check the Back up sector-by-sector parameter. By default the program copies only the hard disk sectors that contain data. However, sometimes it might be useful to make a full sector-by-sector backup. For example, you have deleted some files by mistake and want to make a disk image before trying to undelete them, because sometimes undeleting may create problems in the file system. Please note that this mode increases processing time and usually results in a larger image file because it copies used and unused hard disk sectors."

This is exactly the scenarion I am facing. I have deleted many files (on drive C:) and before I try to undelete them I want to do a really thorough backup. One problem is that True Image is not yet installed on that PC. I have 2 questions:
1) As much as possible nothing should be changed on the drive so that a maximum number of files can be undeleted. Is there a way to install True Image in 'Portable' mode? Or is the best we can do is install it on an external drive connected to the PC (E:\Program files\... for example).
2) If I mess up trying to undelete will I be able to restore the PC exactly as it was from the ATI backup, including all the sectors containing deleted file's data?
3) Bonus question: Do you have an undelete program you would recommend (I had to ask :)) ?

Thank you very much for your time and your help.

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If you are the registered your serial number of your product, you have access to being able to download an iso file from your own account. The downloaded iso file can be then burnt to CD as an image. We refer to this result as the TrueImage Bootable Media Recovery CD.

No installation into WIndows is needed. The CD can be used to boot into TrueImage and from there you can create a "sector by sector" backup. To store a sector by sector backup, you need a storage drive larger than the disk being copied.

http://forum.acronis.com/sites/default/files/forum/2009/11/5940/2012-do…

My understanding is that, if you copy sector by sector then when you restore, the sectors marked as bad on the original disk will be marked bad on the target. Not necessarily a big deal something to think about.

As Scott had indicated. if you restore a backup which has bad sectors, the bad sectors will be marked as bad on the target disk. If you know this is your situation, run "chkdsk C: /R" on the new disk after the restore to correct the bad sector markings.