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Partition image without "sector by sector" selected

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Do the partition images produced with the option "sector by sector"
being UNselected include all properties of the partition (partition type, active, not active,
boot sectors, MBS)?

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Type (primary/logical) and 'active' are stored outside partition - 'active' bit in the MBR and the type is not an attibute, but the type of partitioning scheme. Boot sector is saved too,. Master boot sector is always backed up with all partition backup operations.

If you could amplify that answer please - If I backup the entire system by partition, will it get everything needed to restore a Win 7 system to bare metal? Including that reserved partition Win 7 builds. It is a question I have been pursuing for a bit and see what seem to be inconsistent answers.

Hal:

Yes, backing up all of the partitions (with sector-by-sector not selected) is enough to enable a Bare Metal restore, provided that you restore all of the required partitions. In your example of a Windows 7 installation with a Windows partition and a System Reserved partition, you would need to restore both partitions to have a bootable disk.

To amplify the differences between a normal partition backup and a sector-by-sector backup, the normal backup does not include unused sectors, the Windows paging file, and the Windows hibernation file (it includes empty placeholders for these two files since Windows re-creates both files at boot time). The normal backup mode includes everything needed to restore the partition.

By contrast, a sector-by-sector backup includes every sector on the partition regardless of whether it contains data or not. This type of backup is very large and is only needed in a limited number of situations.

Hope this helps...

Thank you Mark. That is the clearest explanation I have found. It reflects how I thought it should work, but found different explanations.