Partition restore query

[phil.brady]

I am using XP Home SP2 and Acronis 9.0.3854.
My backup device is an external USB drive which includes a partition with a bootable copy of XP and a partition for .tib backup files. The XP copy was generated 2 years ago with an Acronis clone operation to the new disk.

This afternoon I removed the drive from the USB housing and plugged it into the PC motherboard in place of my normal drive. XP as configured back in 2006 booted up fine. I then over-wrote the XP partition with a restore rather than a clone operation from a .tib backup using a rescue disk.

Two questions arose:

1. The freshly written partition would not boot until I had also re-written the MBR. XP disk checking suggested it was trying to access it as K: which is the letter it was usually allocated when in its USB housing. I thought that XP allocated C: to the boot partition, after which it’s normally a bit of a lottery which letter is allocated unless you force it with a tool like USBDLM, but clearly it’s a bit more subtle than that. Where did it get that K: from?

2. Could I have done this operation via the USB cable?

Phil

[Acronis Support]

Hello phil.brady,

Thank you for choosing Acronis Disk Backup Software (http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/products/trueimage/).

We are sorry for delayed response.

Please notice that since Windows already saw the disk as an external one, it assigned the same letter to it at boot (identifying by Disk ID). Disk ID is stored in MBR, so after overwriting it, Windows assigned the proper drive letter. Please see this article (http://www.goodells.net/multiboot/partsigs.htm) for more information.

It is possible to restore an archive stored on an USB drive to an internal drive (and it's a usual practice).

Thank you.
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Marat Setdikov