Restoring an Image to a new hard drive.

I have never restored an image to a new hard drive. Soon I plan to do so.

Questions:

1. When you restore an Image (Image for Windows/Image for DOS/Image for Linux ) to a new hard drive, does the restore operation detect and not write to any bad sectors?

2. Is there a need to do a "chkdsk /r" once you boot into Windows for the first time with the new hard drive?

3. Any other tips/advice?

Thanks in Advance.

 

I've never used IFW, but have used Acronis, Win 7 backup Macrium Reflect, Clonezilla and ShadowProtect, the latter of which is my incumbent image/restore approach, and I've never ran chkdsk before restoring images. I'd only run it if I noticed signs of possible disk corruption.

The only tip I can offer, one I feel is quite important, is how you want to set up the new disk to gain the best use out of it. If it's considerably larger than necessary to hold your main O/S, you may want to partition it first to hold it plus other types of data, maybe even another O/S. whether it be Windows or Linux, for example. Mine is partitioned to hold Win7, a Linux distro, storage/backup data, and backup images (of course I backup all important data and images to another physical drive as well). keep in mind your Windows partition you want to restore the image to will probably, depending on IFW's capabilities, need to be at least as large or larger than the source image. You may notice the linux partitions are enclosed within an extended partition, which gives me more than the 4 partition limit, because Windows considers it as one partition, excluding the three Linus partitions residing inside it. If you do decide to partition your new drive, spend some time thinking it over before you commit, or you'll have to run a partitioning program or disk to resize/move partitions around, which can take some time and may cause problems, although Partition Wizard (I use the free boot disk iso) is fabulous for this

 

A new hard drive should not have bad sectors. But if the restore program finds bad sectors, the operation can fail. If you suspect that the disk may have bad sectors, partition it and run chkdsk before restoring the image.

If Windows "needs" to run chkdsk, it will ask for it, or will reboot and begin the execution automatically.

 

I just restored the image to my new hard drive with Image for DOS. It took a little under 4 minutes to restore ~12 GB (uncompressed size) of System Partition files. Everything seemed fine on bootup, but I decided to do a chkdsk /r anyway. The chkdsk /r process took about 20 minutes to complete. No errors or bad sectors were found.

 

Bad sectors are handled by the HDD and S.M.A.R.T.
The HDD's have as much as 40% more sectors than the native size for bad sector replacement.
Chkdsk is a windows tool, one feature is to restore data from bad sectors if detected.
Chkdsk is not required unless you are experiencing some problems.

Other advice:
Wipe before restore from image. It will ensure a smooth restore and prevent any chance of residual data persisting.
Being the Secure Erase evangelist that I am, you should wipe using SE preferably.
It's the most thorough and fastest wiper available.
If you have a really big drive 1tb or 2 tb, multi-partition it into smaller sizes easier for searching and scanning.

 

Have also not used IFW was about to but got a Paragon Drive Backup 9 license from a friend so I used it in XP. In Win7 I use PBR freeware/Acronis. When there is a bad block or there is something wrong that the program detects it will stop/discontinue and show errors.

Had some experience with XP using DiscWizard/Acronis True Imahe WD edition/Macrium Reflect free. All detected something wrong and discontinued the backup. Had one experience with Macrium Reflect free of a newly created backup that it cannot verify. On all cases the hddI assigned as backup location had bad blocks. So I replaced it. Though it seemed to be repaired as all hdd's have reserved sectors I replaced it so there would be no problems arising due to it.

If you suspect that your drive is or has bad sectors I suggest you test it first. Your manufacturer may have diagnostic softwares in their website. Seagate/WD/Hitachi has their own.


On a lighter note, you might wanna check this link. Some nice explanations there and suggested tools, even hard drive sounds that are diagnosed as problems.

 

Agree with Searching_ _ _ there. Wipe first. I do that always.

Additional links for hdd diagnostics...might help you in the future.

Link1

Link2

 

I wiped both of my 2 new 2 TB SATA hard drives using BING (BootIt Next Generation) version 1.87. It is estimated (based on progress bar) that the wipe of each hard drive took about 20 hours. BING, by default, does an error check of some kind after a wipe. I was not home at the time of the error check and I saw no error messages when I returned home.

When I restored the image, I used the "Automatic" restore option which makes the partition size the same as on the previous hard drive. In my case the partition size was about 64 GB. I split the remaining free space into 2 equal size partitions and did a full format on each of the new partitions.

I put the remaining 2 TB SATA hard drive in an external USB 3.0 enclosure. I selected a USB 3.0 enclosure because I new for sure that it supported 2.0 TB SATA hard drives. The main plan for this external USB 3.0 hard drive is for storing multiple System Partition Images for several home PC's. I saw several comments here at Wilders that it is best to keep Images isolated from PC's in the event that some really nasty Malware gets into the PC and deletes any images stored there.

 

Please notice that for optimum performance some O.S. (like Win XP) will require you to use "Advanced Format Hard Drive Utility" to get best performance...
(They recommend to use the "Advanced Format Hard Drive Utility" on the drive prior to putting it in the external box, if not their make & ready run made box, or else using third party tool!)