How to restore an older system image with new hardware configuration
I'm looking for someone smarter than myself to share insight on how to restore an older image with a new hardware configuration. I have Home 2009 build 9809 currently. When I first purchased Home 2009 I created restore disks and made a full system backup. I'm considering restoring my computer back to the state it was in when I created the image.
Here is my situation/question: I have a dual core laptop running Vista x64 w/SP2 currently. When I created the original image I only had 1 HDD (C:) in my computer. Since then I have added a second HDD because of space constraints. The C:\ folder is used for system and program files and the new E:\ drive contains only documents, pictures, music, etc. When I installed the second drive I redirected all of the Documents target folders to the new E: (Documents) drive. Everything is working fine. The files are going where they are supposed to.
Now, here is the big question. How do I go about restoring my older system image with this new HDD configuration? Does the full system image I originally created only have system file and configuration information? Or does it also house My Documents from when I originally created the backup too? I have taken a full image backup of my E:\ Documents drive just in case.
Has anyone else done this type of a restore and if so, can you share with me how you did it and the steps you took? Any information you can provide would be greatly appreciated.

- Accedi per poter commentare

GroverH, thank you for responding. I can restore my personal data files. What I have are two 320GB drives. One for O/S and programs/files (C:)and the other for personal data (E:). My computer has started to become slower over time. Too much crapware, etc. Too many processes running in the background, etc. I'd like to restore my O/S and system files on the C: drive and put my computer back to a state that I know the computer was faster when i hadn't installed all of the junk. Forgive me because I'm new at this, but, the image that I have was done through the backup my computer in Acronis. I believe it is a complete image of the C: drive.
In your opinion. If I restore the system backup onto my C: drive, what issues would I potentially be facing? Should I unmount my E: drive, do the restore, reinstall my second drive, set up the redirect and then restore my data files onto the second drive again?
Any insight would be appreciated. thank you
- Accedi per poter commentare

Robert,
If you have future questions, you would get quicker and a larger number of responses if you post your question in the Acronis True Image Home forum where it will be seen by more participants. The forum in which you posted your question is the one for sharing information about data practices and this has very little traffic.
http://forum.acronis.com/forums/acronis-discussion-forums/acronis-home-…
If you restore you early backup of C, to your current C, the current C will look like it did way back when. Any of the folders moved from C to E will appear back on C as E did not exist at the time. So your restored C will look like it was at the time your backup was created. You cannot restore just parts of C--you are restoring the whole backup. It is possible to restore single files or folder but that will not get your speed back.
Once you restored the old backup, then you would need to recreate the movement of folders onto E. Once you got the folders recreated on E, then you could copy/paste your current folders back overtop of your newly created mostly empty folders.
Be sure and have backups of your data so that if anything goes wrong, you can restore everything back the way it is today.
I don't want to sound discouraging but you may not get back the speed you are expecting. Program updates and volume add slowness. If you computer has room for more memory modules, this usually provides the most bang for the buck. You could also use some of the free cleanup programs and these could help to provide some improvements. Should any of the cleanups do damage, you could always restore back to before the cleanup.
Good luck.
- Accedi per poter commentare

I you have the plus pack and all of your driver files for your new machine, you can do a universsal type of restore whereby you load the approriate drivers befoer you run windows. Although this is not an issue, usually if the only hardware diffs are adding subtracting harddisks. However, you programs might not see what they expect to see (default locations for some files).
I think Grover is right that you might not see the speed diffs you are looking for, for the reasons he stated and I'd try the cleanup route before hassling with trying to restore onto diff hardware.
If were trying this, I'd make a fresh backup of my data files. After the restore, I'd rearrange data directories again as desired, then compy out of the fresh backup the data files to the desired locations.
- Accedi per poter commentare