NightOwl

I think the new imaging apps make a restore failure an unusual event. I recall in the early days of Vista, the Acronis True Image Forum was full of failure stories. Now there are few failures to restore. I mention Acronis TI as it is a very popular app, mainly due to advertising rather than ability. It is very hardware dependent for successful outcomes.

Ghost 15 and the Ver 2 TeraByte products are marketed as Vista/Win7 OK. And they are. I mentioned the /ubp switch for the TeraByte product. I tried a Ghost 15 restore to another HD using the Win7 and the SRP partitions. It worked too.

Having a special Win7 MBR isn't needed. I use BING as a boot manager so my MBR is a TeraByte MBR. I've also installed Win7 into a partition with a Standard MBR and written a Standard MBR to a Win7 HD. Win7 still boots. Apparently some computers do need a special Win7 MBR (none of mine) as TeraByte has recently added a Win7 MBR choice in BING.

Quote:


The Disk Signature is important. If you change it by editing the MBR bytes or by fdisk /mbr, Win7 fails to boot. But a Repair from the Win7 DVD fixes that. In fact a Repair seems to fix just about everything. I described a method to move the boot files from the SRP to the Win7 partition which only enthusiasts will use. But you can simply delete that partition using a partitioning tool and do two Repairs from the Win7 DVD and the boot issue is fixed.

So things aren't as grim as before. A restored image "always" boots (mine always do) but if it doesn't a Repair will fix it.

A quick comment on the Win7 partitioner which produces 2048 sector aligned partitions. BING can do this too but I don't know if other software can. It doesn't matter if you install Win7 into a 2048 sector aligned partition or a legacy cylinder aligned partition, it still works. But don't let Partition Magic anywhere near 2048 sector aligned partitions. It will offer to correct "errors" and that is the last time Win7 will boot until you correct the partition overlaps with BING.

John.

I haven't used Paragon PM. Can it create and work with 2048 sector aligned partitions?

In Reply #42 I outlined how to copy the booting files from a Dell's Recovery Partition to the C: drive. The following is a method to remove the SRP (not present in Dell computers) after copying the booting files to the C: drive.

First, we have to unhide the SRP.

In Disk Management, right click the SRP, click Change Drive Letter and Paths..., click Add, dot in Assign the following drive letter, click the drop down arrow and select P ,  click OK.

Start an Administrator mode Command Prompt. To do this, click on the Start button, then All Programs, then Accessories. Right-click on the Command Prompt item and select Run as administrator from the pop-up menu. If a UAC prompt is displayed, click the Yes button.

Unload the BCD registry hive by running the following command:
reg  unload  HKLM\BCD00000000

Copy the bootmgr file from the SRP to the Windows 7 partition.  Run the following command:
robocopy  p:\  c:\  bootmgr

Copy the Boot folder from the SRP to the Windows 7 partition. Run the following command:
robocopy  p:\Boot  C:\Boot  /s

The booting files have now been copied. If you wish to verify that they were copied correctly, run the following command:
dir  c:\  /ah

If the bootmgr file and the Boot folder show up in the list, the procedure was successful.

In Disk Management, right click the SRP, click Change Drive Letter and Paths..., click Remove, Yes. This hides the SRP again.
In Disk Management, right click the C: drive, click Mark Partition as Active, Yes.

Restart the computer with a BING CD in the drive.
In BING (Partition Work), delete the SRP.
In BING, do a BCD Edit on Win7.
http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/kb/article.php?id=318

reboot


Thanks for assistance from TeraByte Support.