newbie question about restoring to a smaller hard drive

Hello

I have downloaded an evaluation copy of TI 10, and have made an initial full backup, and was wondering if it could help me in the following situation...

I have a Sony VAIO VGN-AR370 Notebook running Vista Ultimate. It has an Intel RAID controller with two 80GB hard drives. It shipped from the factory with a RAID0 configuration, creating a 149.16GB volume that Vista is installed on.

As I mentioned, I've already ran a "My Computer" backup of two partitions: the Vista (C: ) partition (which currently uses 38.2GB of space) and the Recovery partition, which uses 6.410GB. The TIB file was created on an external 250GB USB drive and is 41.3GB. The TIB file was validated after creation.

I have also created a bootable rescue disc, and have tested booting from it. When I boot from the CD, I can mount the external hard drive and access the TIB backup image there, so as far as I can tell, everything appears to be working.

What I would like to do is, delete the RAID volume, and recover my True Image backup to one of the 80GB disks, leaving the other one available for installation of another operating system (in this case, Ubuntu).

Is True Image capable of restoring my backup archive to a smaller disk than the one it imaged? Initially I tried to perform this using Vista's Complete PC Backup & Restore, but in that case it will only restore to the same disk configuration. I've done searching elsewhere on this forum and figured out that True Image doesn't really care if it's creating an image of a RAID 0 volume or not, so I don't think I'd have issues there.

If it helps, here's what True Image reports when I select the MyBackup.tib file for recovery, and then select "Restore disks or partitions":

Disk 1
- VISTA (C: ) Flags: Pri.,Act. Capacity: 142.6GB Free Space: 104.4GB Type: NTFS
- MBR and Track 0 Type: MBR and Track 0
- Recovery Flags: Pri. Capacity: 6.41GB Free Space: 906.1MB Type: FS:NTFS Partition: 0x27 (Unknown)

 

As long as the original used space on the drive is smaller than the new drive, yes True Image can restore to a smaller drive.

 

Great, thanks for the quick reply.

Can I also assume that True Image will restore the Disk image such that it'll have the Vista, MBR and Recovery partitions all in the right place, and I'll be able to boot from that drive after recovery? I know this seems like an obvious question, I just want to make sure there aren't any extra steps I need to go through to make this happen before deleting my RAID volume (and thus, past the point of no return).

 

I don't use Vista so can't tell what will happen. But be sure to use the bootable True Image CD for the best chance at an error free result.

 

Hi,wwinfrey

Welcome to Wilders

If it is Vista that you are moving to a new [different] HDD, you will need to Reactivate with in three [3] days [I think as I am using Linux]

Or you could try PCLinuxOS

Take Care,
TheQuest

 

Don't make such an assumption. Buying a lottery ticket does not guarantee your winning the lottery. Your best bet would be to buy another drive and do your experimenting on a new or test drive. Don't jeopardize your data. You could lose what you have. Do your testing on something besides your current drives!

 

I'd hope that my chances of being able to successfully recover a drive image with True Image would be significantly higher than my chances of winning the lottery with a single lottery ticket.

 

You might want to check the Useful Forum Threads link below and check the thread Vista: Are there issues with disk ID. Perhaps there is info there which might relate to your proposed changes.

 

If I understand correctly what you want to do (go from RAID to non-RAID setup) I suspect that your image might not work right since it has all the RAID drivers in it but your proposed system will not be in a position to use them.

 

This seems to be the case. On startup, Vista's boot manager complains about the missing or corrupted winload.exe, leading me to believe that due to the issues outlined in the "Are there issues with Disk ID" thread, I need to run a startup repair.

What leads me to believe the lack of non-RAID drivers are the issue is that, when I fire up the System Recovery, it's unable to find the operating system to repair, but if I go to look for drivers, I can clearly see the Vista and Recovery partitions.

Any ideas? Perhaps it's impossible to install the necessary drivers at this point.

 

This link is from a thread with a similar issue I recently saw. Maybe there is something in the extra links there. I'm pretty sure I did see a way to change the drivers on the fly using the Windows DVD in the process.

 

The interesting thing is that I can browse the single disk when looking for drivers in the "Select the OS to repair", it's just that the Vista installation never shows up for repair selection. If I continue without selecting it, and choose "Startup Repair", it seems to do something. Here's the Diagnosis and repair details:

Startup Repair diagnosis and repair log
-------------------------------------
Number of repair attempts: 1

Session details
--------------
System Disk = \Device\Harddisk2
Windows directory =
AuthChk Run = 0
Number of root causes = 1

Test performed:
---------------
Name: Check for updates
Result: Completed successfully. Error code = 0x0
Time taken = 16 ms

Test performed:
---------------
Name: System disk test
Result: Completed successfully. Error code = 0x0
Time taken = 16 ms

Test performed:
---------------
Name: Disk repair diagnosis
Result: Completed successfully. Error code = 0x0
Time taken = 0 ms

Test performed:
---------------
Name: Disk metadata test
Result: Completed successfully. Error code = 0x0
Time taken = 0 ms

Root cause found:
-----------------
The partition table does not have a valid System Partition.

Repair action: Partition table repair
Result: Complete successfully. Error code = 0x0
Time taken = 16161 ms

-----------------
-----------------

However, no matter how many time I run Startup Repair, it's still never able to boot up, giving me the same error every time.