Solved booting into image problem

[thejarrick]

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,

 

[Bare Foot Kid]

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.

 

[gregrocker]

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. http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/105541-startup-repair-run-3-separate-times.html

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]

I guess it was me and the differences between the terms 'image' and 'clone' oh well.

 

[thejarrick]

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:

 

[Bare Foot Kid]

No you are not in C:, you're in G: according to Windows.

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.

 

[gregrocker]

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.

 

[thejarrick]

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

 

[gregrocker]

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.

 

[Bare Foot Kid]

Good to see you got the boot-up issue sorted; have you been able to tell them apart yet?

 

[mjf]

Glad you solved your problem.
To clear confusion for others. Every HDD has an MBR on the physical first 512 bytes of the drive - nowhere else. It provides a number of functions from basic partition table information for data disks to full first stage boot information for boot disks. See a description of the windows boot process.
Running the Windows repairx3 fixes the key boot elements MBR, PBR/bootsector, BCD.

 

[thejarrick]

Good to see you got the boot-up issue sorted; have you been able to tell them apart yet?

I think I figured out which drive is which in the BIOS boot order - just a case of unplugging one at a time and seeing how it affects the BIOS.

That thing with windows thinking I'm running it from another drive is a bit wierd - I checked by adding a new file to my desktop and then going into each drive to see where it is and it's definately not on the one where the flag is. Strange, but that's how it is.

 

[thejarrick]

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.

I didn't know that even existed - I'll be giving that a go. I was wondering if it would be better to have windows running on a separate HDD to all my data files (in terms of performance). any idea if that is a better way of doing things?

 

[gregrocker]

One way separating the data to it's own drive is better is that it keeps the backup image more compact with only OS and Programs, so that if WIn7 becomes irreparable you can reimage OS/Programs and data will be waiting and current in its own separate partition "vault." It still needs to be backed up though.

But if you are keeping a backup clone of your System HD, then you have full redundancy so this isn't really necessary.

You can try it to see if you like the arrangement, though: http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/18629-user-folders-change-default-location.html