paragon drive backup restore

when i restore a image what happens. i know the computer will be restored to the settings in the image but will it delete everything on the hdd first like a windows reformat of the hdd or will it be more like a reinstall with old files saved on the harddrive?

 

No delete first or saving old files, it just overwrites everything.

 

so its exactly like a reformat? if im restoring a image because my computer has a virus i shouldnt manually reformat first-to get rid of the virus because restoring deletes everything on the harddrive before restoring the image on the computer anyways?

 

No it's not. Disk imaging is far faster, more convenient, and much more recent. Unnecessary.

 

If you want to get picky, restoring the image of a partition probably is better than a format. Contrary to a lot of popular belief a format does not overwrite the sectors on a HD. The quick format just sets up the filesystem structure and the long format also does a read-check of the the disk sectors. The actual contents of any sector not overwritten are not destroyed. This is how those programs that claim to get your data back even after a format are able to work and also why there is a market for programs to erase a disk. Like I said it is picky because virus code sitting on a disk sector that is no longer linked to something in the OS or an executable program is certainly not likely to be able to do anything.

Restoring an image deletes the partition being restored and then copies the image content onto the HD. This means that the previous filesystem structure (the format) and the sector contents are copied onto the disk overwriting what was there.

BTW, the need to restore an image to remove a virus is one of the reasons that you should keep a series of old images since it often isn't known when the virus was received. Some people like to keep only a current image and this is folly because if recent it may also contain the virus and if for some reason it is unuseable then you don't have a backup.