Restore MBR,from image on D: , or not?

Hi. Since I have been having a number of mysterious problems out of the blue for the last day or two, and I am tired of trying to fix them, I thought I might restore an image made a couple of weeks ago, after backing up new data. But I'm already stumped. When I get to the "select a partition to restore" part, I have two choices, "MBR and track 0" or "C:". . Which should I choose? I see If I choose "MBR", the "next" button takes me to also choose C: partition.Sorry to be so dense, but the users guide only says I can choose MBR "IF" it is critical to my system boot?
So should I restore MBR as a part of C; image restore, or is that only done under some specific set of problems?

Also, I have a copy of this image on several DVDs. Is there any reason I should restore from there rather than from D: partition? This is TI home build 3633, on WinXP.

Also, when I made this image, I only imaged C: I later used "windows recovery tools cd" to add a new partition. Will I be able to restore just C: without damaging D: ?

Thanks,
Bill

 

Hi corinthian,

You should restore C partition only. Leave MBR unticked. The MBR image you have available originates from the single-partition layout you had when the image was created and would therefore not suit the two-partition layout you have now.

The D partition will not get damaged by restoring C only.

EDIT: If the image of C was created as a whole disk image, the default selection upon restoring will be Disk 1 + Partition C: + MBR and track 0.

You must untick Disk 1 to unselect everything first and then you'll be able to select only C.

You can use either copy of the image, but selecting the one stored on D will be more convenient.

 

Thank you, BVolk. I'll now give it a try.
Bill

 

As a FirstDefense-ISR-user, I always include the MBR when I recover a system backup to avoid the absence of a FD-ISR Pre-boot screen or a false FD-ISR Pre-boot screen.

However, if you don't include the MBR during recovery, FD-ISR offers the possibility to enable/disable the FD-ISR Pre-boot screen, which also recovers the MBR and the Pre-boot Screen, if you don't forget to do this.

So both methods are valid and work properly, I've tested this more than once.
The last method is a bit shorter.

Without FD-ISR, I don't need to include the MBR at all, when I recover a system backup.

 

The point here is that TI Build 3633 copies the MBR & Track 0 data, which includes the Partition Table. Therefore as bVolk rightly said, if using an image of a single partition disk, you must not restore its MBR & Track 0 data to a multi-partitioned disk. To do so would render those other partitions inaccessable.

Regards