I thought this was worth posting on its own...

Kudos to Paragon Software:

and

A BIG THANK YOU

Main Hard Drive has catastrophic failure --- the nuclear option. Hard Drive too hot to handle, no noise, no spinning, no noise... it was DOA.

1. Buy New Drive

2. Restore C Drive from latest cyclic backup which runs every M, W and Sat.

3. Fix boot problem...(ntldr missing)

4. Back up and running.... Files lost: ZERO

Elasped Time: 3.5 hours

Elapsed Time if I had known what to do about the boot problem right off the bat: 2.25 hours.

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1TB hard Drive = $85

Paragon Software = $50

Restored machine after catastrophic HD failure: PRICELESS

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Get the impression I am happy You're right !

 

It's times like this that make the effort of doing backups worthwhile. I've been lucky and over the years have never had a totally failed HD. I have restored lots of images but they have been for upgrading to a new HD or just resetting the system after playing with some new software I didn't want. I just threw out a bunch of CDs and DVDs containing old images going back several years that had never once been put back into the computer.

Glad you got it workiing and for the benefit of others reading this board can you give the cause of the NTLDR missing problem and the fix?

I am curious because one of the last things Paragon does after restoring is a search for Windows OSes and I always presumed that it would correct the boot info so the found OS would boot.

 

I also have this post here, but I have learned/figured out a few other details, I believe.

My backup was of drive c:\ and did NOT include a backup at the VOLUME level, i.e. no MBR or boot sector info. This is because the drive is partitioned and the backup would become ginormous. Thus, I only back up the c:\ partition of the volume containing the OS.

When I restored c:\ to the new volume, it did not have, or it had a hosed MBR. IT was marked as active, and was primary.

THERFORE, upon re-booting initially, the BIOS did not recognize drive 0 as a bootable device , and kept trying to boot to the second hard drive, which has no OS. Hence the NTFSLDR missing error...

The fix was, finally, to unplug the second drive from the board, reboot into the Win7 DVD, and select fix my computer, and in there to "fix boot problems". DId it. Rebooted, and the computer booted off the new drive perfectly. Shut down, re-"attached" the second drive, booted again --- and --- ALL was well.

This is the scenario as I interpret it. This may not be completely accurate, but this is my take on it.