booting into image problem

HI, I've recently re-installed windows 7 and I wanted to back it up as an image so that if the hard drive fails, all I have to do is unplug it and plug in my backup drive (G) and it will work.
I used Norton Ghost to make the image but it won't boot. I had a look and it seems that there's no master boot record, even though I checked the box when making the image to copy the master boot record.
The problem I think is that the MBR is on a separate little partition that was created when I installed windows 7 and when I mirrored it, I only mirrored C: and didn't include F: where the MRB is.
The other thing that might be causing me some problems is that drive H: looks like it has a MBR on it too - left over from when XP was installed and I'm not sure if it's safe to delete it.

can someone tell me if I can just copy and past all the files from F: onto my backup drive G:?

on the image I attached, C: is my main OS, F: holds the MBR for C, G: is my backup drive, H: has nothing I want on and is ready for deletion I: is empty, J: is empty,

It appears you cloned the C drive over to G without the System MBR which exists on F.

If you want to make G bootable on its own, unplug all other HD's, set G as first HD to boot in BIOS setup, boot the Win7 DVD to run Startup Repair up to 3 separate times to write the System MBR to G. Startup Repair - Run 3 Separate Times

Power down to plug back in C, set it as first HD to boot in BIOS setup again, then boot G as needed by using the one-time BIOS Boot Menu key which every computer has:
Asus - F8
HP/Compaq - Esc
Sony - F2
Acer - F12
Gateway - F10
eMachnes - F10
Toshiba - F12
Dell - F12
IBM/Lenovo - the blue Thinkvantage button

In the future I'd use Acronis superior cloning app which has free WD and Seagate editions on their SUpport Downloads webpage if you have one of those HD's on your system. Unplug all other HD's, make sure only System drives are marked Active.

Bare Foot Kid said:

Hello thejarrick, welcome to Seven Forums!



Maybe there's a misunderstanding somewhere, maybe it's just me.



The OS on G: is the one that is booted now, the one you're using at present, the flag Boot is the indication of the OS that is running.

An image won't boot on its own, it must be laid down to a HDD to boot.

just for clarity, it's C: which I'm currently booted into and I am also a bit confused as to why the windows icon is on drive G: but I checked and I'm definately using C:

It doesn't really matter which you're in now.

Just follow the steps I gave earlier to boot HD's separately via BIOS so each remains independent to come and go as you please.

Isn't this your goal?

You can also store a backup image on another HD instead of keeping an exact clone on hand, but it seems that was your intention and you apparently have HD's to spare.

success! that worked just fine, Thanks very much for the wisdom.

Glad it helped.

You can use Windows Live Sync to sync G to C in place of backup, even synching both to Windows free Skydrive as an off-site backup.