selective system image restore?

good day! last week, my laptop was starting to get slow and lags from time to time so i decided to do restore my system image..

a little flashback while we're at it.. when i made a system image, i did not include my d and e drives (personal data and work files) since i make a regular backup of my files.

back to present after i was done restoring, i was shocked to see that my d and e files were also wiped out. i did not know that they also be wiped out and my problem was my last back.up was from 3 weeks before.. i had to purchase easeus data recovery wizard pro just to recover my files..

now, i'm contemplating on doing a system image restore on my desktop at home but i only want to restore the c drive.. not the other drives.. is there an option how to only restore the c drive?

thanks in advance! :)

Hello jaypels.



Will you please post a snip of Windows disk management so we can see if there's any surprises we should know about before any suggestions are made?

   Note

In the Windows start menu right click computer and click manage, in the left pane of the "Computer Management" window that opens click disk management and post a snip of that.

How to Upload and Post a Screenshot and File in Seven Forums

thank you for the replies.. here is my snip.. as you can see, my c drive is quite small.. i intended it that way so that i would not be tempted to install games (light ones, maybe) this is my laptop's by the way.. my desktop have a similar layout (only difference is that the c drive has more space) so i figured i the laptop's disk management would suffice.. but if you sir would require it, it would not be a hassle uploading it

When restoring a Windows image I would recommend you untick the format option when you have other data partitions. When I do this my data partition never gets touched. The exception is when you are going to a new HDD .

System Image Recovery

You can include your data partition with Windows imaging. If you wish to "back" these data partitions up with imaging - Macrium Reflect will allow you to select and restore partitions individually.
One problem with Macrium Reflect is that a reimage to a partition which has a low percentage usage (eg 60GB used out of a 450GB partition) it's reimage can be substantially longer than Windows image restore.

As Greg said, if you used windows7 imaging, you never know what you get. At the least, it will restore C and the 100MB active partition. And that is OK. Whether it would drag the other 2 partitions along you can only find out by looking into the image. System Image - Extract Files Using Disk Management

I suggest you use Macrium to Image the 2 partitions that you do not want to be reinstalled. Then you pull the Windows7 image in. Should it restore the 2 partitions too, you can restore them with the Macrium images. In Macrium you can image several partitions at one time, but you can only restore one at a time. But it works well. Here is my video tutorial that describes the Macrium process from the beginning all the way to the restore process. Imaging with free Macrium

mjf said:

When restoring a Windows image I would recommend you untick the format option when you have other data partitions. When I do this my data partition never gets touched. The exception is when you are going to a new HDD .

System Image Recovery

oh.. i think i chose the reformat drive option i was so hasty then and i forgot to read everthing.. all i did was next, next and next now i regret it.. i recovered most of my files anyway but some important ones were never recovered.. but that's life.. you live and you learn i would restore the system image on my desktop later this week and let's see what will happen if incheck the reformat drive option.. but i'll back up my data first just in case thank you so much everyone!

sir mjf, from what i understand on your latest post, incase if my other partition gets reformatted again, this would replace Easeus data recovery wizard pro? the only difference is that it would recover my data while still in "boot" mode?