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A hidden partition gets a drive letter after restore: OS doesn't start anymore, because it is now on D

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Hello,

I got a new notebook, it has a hidden recovery partition in the first 25 GB of HDD Data. Then the OS Win7 follows on C.

I made a full backup of entire HDD. THe hidden recovery partition was also part of it.

Then I restored it to another HDD. After that the notebook boots only into the recovery partition in order to recover the OS. I saw then that the hidden partition gets a drive letter, C:, and the OS D:. That must be the reason why I can't boot into my Win7 installation.

What's wrong? I can't find any other method to recover the hidden partition without a drive letter... DO you ahve any suggestions?

Thanks a lot!

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Did you create a full disk image (the checkbox above the checkboxes for each partition)?
When restoring, did you select full disk restore including MBR, and did you check to restore disk signature?

BTW, my new Dell laptop had a Dell recovery partition without a drive letter. The boot files were on that recovery partition and it was the Active partition. So, whenever the computer was booted it booted first from the recovery partition and then loaded Windows from the OS partition. That is a normal factory setup for Dell computers.

DB4711,

Do the recovery from the recovery CD. When you run ATI from the CD, the UI of ATI will show you drive letters (for file browsing) that are different from the drive letters in Windows. Look at the drive name/label.

When you restore, restore the whole disk, as Tuttle suggest, including all partitions and the MBR+Track0. The check box at the disk level needs to be checked. Again when you choose the destination for the restore, look a the drive labels, not letters.

PS: If you were to restore each partition manually (not needed here), you would not try to change the drive letter during each restore setup (you can do this, just don't do it).
Don't forget that the information in the backup is correct, only the UI of ATI is not assigning drive letters like Windows.