Imaging Windows 7 with a Hidden 'System' Partition

[Radish]

Hi,

I just got a new computer. It came with Windows 7 pre-installed by the computer manufacturer. I have no previous experience in using Windows 7 (just arrived there after years of WinXP).

In the pre-install setup the first three partitions on the hard-drive are as follows:

Partition 1: 'Hidden' 8.30 GB (Recovery Partition) - (no file-system information shown for this partition)
Partition 2: 'Hidden' 300 MB (System, Active, Primary Partition) NTFS
Partition 3: Windows 7 (C:) 100 GB (Boot, Page File, Crash Dump, Primary Partition) NTFS

Can someone answer the following questions for these partitions.

1) When I make an image of my system which of these partitions do I need to image to have fully functioning capability of recovering my system?

2) Does the data in Partition 2 change in any way if I make changes to Partition 3 by way of the files it holds? What I'm getting at is, is it possible to make an image of Partition 2 once and thereafter only make images of Partition 3 (the content of which I will certainly be altering in the furture) but still be able to fully recover my system? (I hope you can see what I'm getting at here.)

[TeraByte Support(PP)]

I would make a backup of the entire disk and save it in case you ever want to (or need to) return to a clean factory state by restoring. This backup includes everything -- the OEM recovery partition, the SRP, and the Windows 7 partition.

For normal backups you can either go ahead and do the entire disk (8.3GB is still a small partition) or you could exclude it and just back up the SRP and the Windows 7 partition. I recommend backing up the SRP (this is the small 300MB partition that contains the booting files) with the Windows partition since data on it does change and Windows requires it to boot. It's also very small so takes next to no time/space to include.

Worst case, if you only have the Windows 7 partition backed up and the disk dies, you can still recover the Windows system (a boot repair will be required). If you have your original entire disk image you could restore that and then restore your current Windows 7 partition to bring things back up to date (if your normal backups are of the entire disk then you could just restore your most recent backup).

[Radish]

Okay thanks very much for the response. I already made a full backup of all three partitions just to cover a worst case scenario.

However, going by what you are saying, for doing normal backups I'll just back up the SRP and the Windows 7 partitions - and hope that keeps me in the clear.

Many thanks.