Preparing for Hard Disk failure

Hello,

I look after 3 laptops and a desktop PC. For a couple of years I've been using Hard Disk Manager Suite to perform regular image backups. For the purpose of this post, I will concentrate on a Dell XPS 1340 laptop running Windows 7 64 bit.

The Dell has 4 partitions - C: Win7 System (Primary), E: Programs (Primary), D: Data (Extended logical) and G: Media (Extended logical). It also has a Dell Utility partition (125.4MB FAT16 'Oem Service Volume', Primary).

I image the C and E drives, the Dell Utility partition and the First Hard Disk Track in a complex archive on a regular basis. The D and G partitions are imaged less frequently as I have alternative arrangements for updating new and changed files.

I have restored the C partition successfully on a number of occasions when originally installing Win7 on the laptop. What I have never had to do is to recover from a dead hard disk. So, I would like to check out the correct process for recovering from a complete hard disk failure or for possibly upgrading to a larger hard disk.

I expect the replacement hard disk to be unformatted, so I would expect to proceed as follows:

Remove the existing hard disk from the laptop and replace it with the new hard disk.

Boot up from the Paragon Win PE recovery CD/DVD. Using the Paragon Hard Disk Manager in the Win PE environment:

1 Create empty partitions on the new disk as follows:
Dell Utility (125.4 MB FAT16)
C: Win7 System (Primary NTFS)
E: Programs (Primary NTFS)
Create Extended partition
D: in extended partition (Logical NTFS)
G: in extended partition (Logical NTFS)

2 First Hard Disk Track - What do I need to do for this? My Paragon backup archives always shows this as 0 Bytes?

3 Sequentially Restore C, E, D and G partitions

4 Do I need to mark the C partition 'active'?

5 Reboot and all works OK??

I would appreciate comments on the above flow so that I am prepared should a hard disk failure occur.

Thank you,

Geoff

 

I see no obvious reason why it shouldn´t work.

It may be necessary to initialize new disks for them to be recognized by Paragon software. I am not sure if this happens with internal disks, it has happened to me with external USB disks. I have initialized them using the Windows disk manager.

About the C partition: is it the "active" partition now? or the active is the "utility" partition? After restore, you should check that the "active" is the same as it was before. If not, you should change the settings accordingly.

About the First Track: its contents is generated automatically.

"Reboot and all works OK?" You should have a Windows 7 repair or installation disk ready, to "repair" the installation in case there are boot problems.

 

Robin A - thanks for your prompt reply.

The active partition on the Dell is the C drive. Interestingly, the active partition on the other 2 laptops (both Sony VAIOs) is the '100 MB System Reserved'.
When Paragon restores the partitions, does it maintain the Active status of the partitions or is it the user responsibility to set a partition Active?

Geoff

 

Yes, the active status is maintained, in my experience. Anyway, it's easy to check this from the WinPE after the restore, and change the setting if necessary.

 

I would not wait for one of the disks to fail on 3 laptops. Buy a replacement and do a test recovery to it.