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Help Recover Dead HDD then Upgrade to SSD
My 1TB primary HDD (Mar-2012) is dead.
It was partitioned into 100 MB System, 150 GB OS (C:), 760 GB Data (D:), and 17 GB HP_Recovery (E:)
Windows recovery tries to run, but immediately crashes to a blue screen error message.
My 640GB secondary HDD (Jun-2009, only one partition) has a recent Macrium Reflect image that is visible when booting from the recovery media. The Macrium image includes only the System, C:, and E: partitions. I had a problem back in April that I solved by restoring a Macrium image from the secondary HDD, but in that case the primary HDD was visible and it is not now visible as a destination to restore the Macrium image.
Besides the Macrium recovery media, I have a Windows 7 repair disk that I created in Aug. 2014. Unfortunately, I didn't ever try it to see if it worked and it doesn't have the necessary drivers to run so I'm not sure if it would be able to repair anything or not.
Question 1: is that 1TB HDD completely toast? If I somehow get Windows up and running again on the pc, is it likely I would at least be able to see the D: partition? (Why do I care? Data on D: is backed up manually once a month and this all happened 2 days before the next backup so there's a small amount of data not backed up… not critical, just annoying.)
Question 2: Could I just restore the Macrium image to the secondary HDD, which I believe does have space available? Would it be as simple as restoring the image and setting the BIOS to boot from that HDD? Would I have the option to restore only the System and C: partitions? (Why do I care? The E: partition is worthless, I never should have included it.)
Question 3: Seems like a good time to update to a SSD and I'm willing to squander the cash on a Samsung 850 EVO 1TB drive. Is it as simple as plugging in the drive and restoring the Macrium image or will I need to do something to prep the new drive? Also the existing cable in the pc says Serial ATA 3.0 AWG 26, so am I correct thinking I've got the highest level necessary for the higher speed SSD?
Thanks in advance to anyone who has the patience to respond to my questions!