System Image Recovery

I've got a rather complicated question, due to how I've laid my Windows 7 installation out. My PC Hard Drives are configured like this:

(200GB HDD):
C:\ Windows 7 Installation

(200GB HDD):
D:\ Program Files, Program Files (x86) and Games folders

(2 x 1TB HDD in RAID1 mirror):
E:\ User Folders, Media and Data

120GB HDD:
G:\ (116GB Partition) System Image (C: only - 20GB) and Registry Backup (153MB)
Z:\ (4GB Partition) Bootable Revovery Partition

My C:\ (200GB HDD) failed over the weekend, and I now have a brand new 500GB SATA Disk to replace it. If I boot from the recovery partition and tell it to restore the System Image of C:\ to the new disk using the tutorial above, will the restore leave my D:\ and E:\ untouched, or should I disconnect them before proceding?

Brink said:

It depends on if they were included in the system image backup

Hi Shawn,

Thanks for the reply. The System Image was of the C:\ only, so I'm guessing that the restoration will only affect the replacement Hard Drive and not my other ones.

However I think I will disconnect them as you advise just to be on the safe side!

Many thanks,

Bryan.

I know this post is old but i couldn't help but say something. This does suck that you have to restore to the same partition that the image was taken from. I found it out the hard way. I was really happy that image backups were now possible without a third party program. One less program i need to install, and being built in, you would think (or hope) that there is great integration options. I wonder if anyone has tried just setting the restore partition to the same size as the one the image came from works. But does it need to be exactly the same size down to the byte? I wonder if this was done on purpose for some Anti-piracy reason.

Oh well, guess ill be keeping Acronis around.

woops!!! i didnt see there were multiple pages on this topic, so my post probably dosent make muc sense.

Sorry

Ok, Now I have read through all of the posts here. But now im a little confused. I had Windows set up just the way i wanted and had been making regular images with the built in backup program. But then i aquired a larger HDD for my laptop and thought i could just pop it in and restore from my image that was on A Usb drive. It wouldn't let me though. I recieved errors saying it couldn't finish the restore. I did some googling and what i was finding is that the image has to be restored to the same Drive that it was made from. I assumed that they just needed to be the same size. Now should i be able to just restore my image to the larger drive without any problems, or do i have to make a partition that is the same size as the one i imaged.

i was thinking maybe it was just a fluke and my image was corrupted somehow. i didnt move it or anything but it just wouldnt restore to the new drive. oh well. maybe ill run a test restore on another drive and see what happens. just want to make sure that my backups are gonna be there and ready for me in case of a failure or other problem.

thx for the response

milanmpq said:

Hello everyone, newbie here with some knowledge. I am having trouble restoring Windows 7 Ultimate from a system image stored on a network folder.

When I go into System Recovery Options screen and select System Image Recovery, I do Select a system image manually, as mine is not on any internal or external drives and Windows doesn't see it.

Then it connects to my network fine. I get to Search for the system image on the network and I have to enter the folder name where the image is - it gives the example of \\server\share. It asks for login credentials for the NAS which I enter correctly; and then I invariably get the 0x80070035 message "the network path is not found"! The name of my NAS is DiskStation so I've tried Diskstation\backup\WindowsImageBackup\{My PC's name}\{Backup Date and Time} There is a folder \\DISKSTATION\backup\WindowsImageBackup\MyPC\Backup 2009-08-30 230012 on my NAS, I just copied and pasted this from Windows Explorer so you can see the exact folder location. I can browse this folder and open it and whatnot in Windows, of course.

I tried this over WiFi and Ethernet, same thing. I've tried other folders on my NAS, same message. If I enter a non-existent location just for the heck of it, I get 0x70070043, which makes me think it does perhaps see... something and connectivity is not the issue.

What is the deal?! Please help.

If you still need help, I found that the complete path should not be entered for the folder name where the image is located. You might try stopping at \\DISKSTATION\backup\WindowsImageBackup and see if the image file appears on the list of files you can select.