Restore after hard disk crash

Hello,

I have been using True Image 9.0 to back up my laptop's entire hard disk to an external hard drive. Last week, the laptop's disk crashed a few days after making a full backup. So I have most of the data I lost in this backup. Unfortunately I have not made a recovery disk with True Image. I do have the original system recovery disks that came with the laptop--these will reinstall all the original operating system onto the disk.

The original OS was XP. Since then I have upgraded it to XP SP2 and also have downloaded all the other upgrades recommended by Microsoft. The hard disk is damaged--many sectors are corrupted--according to the laptop's diagnostic program. So I am going to get a new disk and put it in the laptop.

So how should I proceed to restore everything, including the XP2 with all the upgrades, from my True Image backup back to the new hard disk?

Another question, in case anyone knows: if I can somethow reformat the damaged disk, will that make it useable? Or is it trash?


Thanks in advance.

 

Have you ever done a restore from your external drive to the internal HD? If not then your position is a little more uncertain.

You will have to make a restore CD from within TI before you attempt to recover to the new HD. This can be done on another PC since the CD is not machine specific.

Trying to format your original HD will just make things harder to recover and since it is in bad shape it is likely to totally ruin whatever is left on it.

I would remove it and put it aside such that if your restore doesn't work and there is some very important file you need you might then recover it from the damaged HD by other means. There are programs you can get that specialize in recovering data from damaged drives but don't expect miracles; the data may be in the damaged area of the disk.

 

Dear seekforever,

thanks for the reply. I'll make a restore CD on another computer, install a new HD in my laptop, and try to recover the data. When I use TI I use the normal settings and let it verify the backup afterwards, and it always verifes okay.

My old HD was 30 gig, if the replacement is larger will that be an issue?

 

Hi R L C,

There won't be any problem restoring to a larger replacement drive, but the best approach to have the additional disk space assigned will depend on whether the image you want to restore shows the "MBR and Track 0" as a separate item to restore or not. That in turn depends on the build number of TI9 the image had been created with (pre or post 3567).

As soon as you tell us if you see "MBR and Track 0" beneath the partitions to be restored, we will be able to advise on the technique to adopt to restore to a larger drive.

 

The build is 2259.

 

Hi again R L C,

Install the new drive and leave it blank.

Boot from Rescue CD and restore the whole image (tick the checkbox next to Drive 1). That will leave you with some unallocated space on the new larger drive when restoration is accomplished. To assign that space, perform another restoration after the first one, this time selecting partition C: and resizing it on the following screen. To resize, type the new size in the appropriate box or draw on the size strip. If your original drive contained more then one partition, in the step before last reply that you want to add another partition and you will be taken back to the partition selection screen, where from you will make all the selections again, this time for D: .

You could also assign the unallocated space by creating a Secure Zone in it and then deleting Secure Zone (assigning it's space to one of the existing partitions upon deletion). I prefer the first method and would certainly avoid this second alternative if I had a Dell or another computer with it's own hidden restore partition.