TeraByte Unlimited

Hi,

I've been using (a purchased copy of) BootIt Ng for years for imaging my family's laptops, with a smallish C: partition and large D: partition. For convenience (and since BootIt doesn't support USB drives), I keep a clean system image on the D: drive, or on a third data partition.

I'm considering switching over to Image for DOS, now that Win7 boots differently and includes a hidden "system partition", but the restore process is not clear to me, even after reading the manual. Do you have or know of a tutorial on this?

After many hours setting up a clean system, I've imaged C: and "system reserved" in one run of IFD. But can I later restore both at once (or one by one) without damaging data partitions? Should I even try to restore both? I don't use BitLocker, so I suppose I could just restore the C: image and then run the Windows Repair Disc. That feels 'messy', though.

I don't really want to try the following... although I don't use BitLocker and my C: drive is using 4K clusters. Looks like a lot of trouble.
How to Remove the Windows "System Reserved" Partition
http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/kb/article.php?id=409

Hmm. Maybe I just restore C: and leave no room for "system reserved". Maybe the Windows repair disc would happily then put the boot files on C:?

Thanks,
-Jon

P.S. I also skimmed http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/howto/ ... ackup.html but that sounds too destructive:
"When you restore a backup, Image for DOS completely overwrites the target drive—the one receiving the backup—and replaces its contents with the information stored in the backup image. The image file you use when restoring cannot reside on the target drive."

In the case of a system with both the System Reserved partition and a Windows partition, you would normally only need to restore the Windows partition. However, if you did need to restore both partitions you would just check those two (not the "Disk" checkbox if backup is of the entire disk) to restore them together. Other partitions on the drive wouldn't be affected (the program warns which partitions will be replaced). You shouldn't need to do a boot repair with the Windows repair disc for either type of restore.

If you restore the partitions separately, restore the System Reserved partition first (use the "Set Active" option), then restore the Windows partition (use the "Update Boot Partition" option).

Thanks for the quick reply! As it turns out, I was able to eliminate the extra partition using just the Image For DOS cd and Windows' automated repair disc (and no command line work). I had made a "multiple file set" image, just in case, but then after deleting both partitions I only restored the main image, resizing it to Max as I did so.

This didn't boot (although I had ticked "boot.ini" and "write standard MBR"). And it also left no free space before or after, which forced the repair disc to do what I wanted: write the boot info to the C: partition. By the end of two boots to the repair disc, it had automatically done that. Good to go, and no more "System Reserved" partition!

(Note: my understanding is that this only worked because my cluster size on C: is 4096, the default. It also won't work with BitLocker.)

FWIW - http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/kb/article.php?id=409


"sysimagine" wrote in message news:[email protected]...

Thanks for the quick reply! As it turns out, I was able to eliminate the
extra partition using just the Image For DOS cd and Windows' automated
repair disc (and no command line work). I had made a "multiple file set"
image, just in case, but then after deleting both partitions I only restored
the main image, resizing it to Max as I did so.

This didn't boot (although I had ticked "boot.ini" and "write standard
MBR"). And it also left no free space before or after, which forced the
repair disc to do what I wanted: write the boot info to the C: partition. By
the end of two boots to the repair disc, it had automatically done that.
Good to go, and no more "System Reserved" partition!

(Note: my understanding is that this only worked because my cluster size on
C: is 4096, the default. It also won't work with BitLocker.)

Brian K wrote:
> Specular,
>
> Easy to do.
>

Thanks. It's hardly what I'd call easy though, there's a fair amount of things to do getting it running from reading the readme. Would be far easier if IFW offered the ability to backup multiple drives sequentially.

Also a belated Merry Christmas to everyone

In the case of a system with both the System Reserved partition and a Windows partition, you would normally only need to restore the Windows partition. However, if you did need to restore both partitions you would just check those two (not the "Disk" checkbox if backup is of the entire disk) to restore them together. Other partitions on the drive wouldn't be affected (the program warns which partitions will be replaced). You shouldn't need to do a boot repair with the Windows repair disc for either type of restore.

Yeah, that's what I said to the "NTLDR not found" prompt, but it didn't respond.

It may depend on whether the partition gets restored to the same location that the MBR already points to. I believe I ended up switched from part1 to part0, since I got rid of System Reserved. So somebody needed to update the MBR (and the boot folder, apparently).

I usually backup both the System Reserved & Win 7.
Belt & suspenders??
Mary


On 2/24/2015 4:27 AM, Segaboy wrote:
> In the case of a system with both the System Reserved partition

and a Windows partition, you would normally only need to restore

the Windows partition. However, if you did need to restore both partitions

you would just check those two (not the "Disk" checkbox if backup is of the

entire disk) to restore them together. Other partitions on the drive
wouldn't

be affected (the program warns which partitions will be replaced).

You shouldn't need to do a boot repair with the Windows repair disc for
either

type of restore.
>
>