Restore help question and disk signiture question

I have imaged my c and d partition but I am only going to restore the c partition. I also have an e, f, and g partition that have not been imaged so they cannot be restored. These are all on the same disk. In the restore options I obviously check the box next to the c partition. I assume that I also want to restore the MBR. Do I want to restore the disk signature also? The effect of this is confusing and scary to me. What effect will it have if I don’t restore it but should have or I do restore it and I should not have? I am using Windows XP.

Here is how I came to be in this situation.

About six months ago I upgraded my five year old 160 gb ide hd to a 320 gb sata hd. I think at the time I used ATI to image some or all of the partitions. Everything worked fine and I was a happy camper until a few weeks ago.

Usually I leave my computer on all the time but I went out of town for four days so I decided to turn it off. When I turned it back on after returning I received a “disk read error occurred” message. I did not know what this message meant and as I did not have an alternative computer I panicked and took the computer to a local repair store. After a lengthy diagnostic test I was told the 320 gb drive had a read element failure and had to be replaced. They said they could replace the drive and maybe clone the old one to a new one so I told them to go ahead and try.

My original drive had a c, d, e, f, and g partition. They said they were able to use their program to clone the drive but some of the data ended up in a “found” directory because it could not be restored to the correct location. In examining the disk later I only saw the “found” directory on the c partition so I assume that they were able to successfully clone the d, e, f and g partitions. I examined some of the data on those partitions and it seems ok, the directory structure looks ok and there is no “found” directory. Looking in the “found” directory I can see subdirectories in there that should be elsewhere on the partition, like some of the user directories.

The repair store told me due to the corruption of the c partition that sent some of the data to the “found” directory the computer was unable to boot. They did a minimum install of Windows XP so I could reinstall ATI and do a restore. The damaged drive was cloned to a disk that was the same brand and size but a different model. The partitions appear to be the same size.

When I got my computer back I first disconnected the 320 gb drive and reconnected the old 160 gb drive to get some work done. I was curious how the restore went so while the 160 was connected as the boot drive I reconnected the 320 gb drive. It was at this time that I discovered the condition it was in and the “found” directory on the 320 gb drive.

I finished the work that I wanted to with the old 160 gb drive so I disconnected it and booted the 320 gb drive. I then got a message “ntldr is missing” and it would not boot. I found the work around for that message but when I booted the root drive was d not c. I read where you could change it back to c in the registry but I must have done something wrong because when it booted it would hang up.

No big deal because I have ATI 2009 on a boot disk so I am ready to do the restore once I know what to do for sure.

I am not restoring the d partition because it seems to have been restored ok when the repair store cloned the damaged drive. Just to be sure though is there some way to compare the image I made of the d partition to the current contents?

I don’t image the e, f and g partitions because there is nothing real important on them. Also when I did the initial transfer from the 160 gb drive to the 320 drive I made an image of those partitions then.

Sorry if this is too long. Is there a limit on the size of a post?