Restoring fixes Boot Volume???

What does restoring a TI image do to the partition itself? Does it reformat it? Is restoring a TI image to the same partition sometimes used as a fix for disk format problems?

Just wondering. Thanks for any replies!

 

The TI image replaces all the data in the partition's sectors with the data from the image. The partition is restored to exactly how it was when the image was made. This will fix any file corruption, virus damage, etc. that has happened since the image was recorded.

Of course, if the area on the disk where the partition is to be restored has suffered physical damage (bad sectors) the restored image may have errors unless the bad sectors are marked by ChkDsk before the restore.

 

Uhm... If ChkDsk wrote information about damaged sectors somewhere in the partition area itself, wouldn't that information also be overwritten when the image is restored? So ChkDsk or no ChkDsk, wouldn't make any difference

Based on previous discussions, I *believe* that the bad sector issue is not a real issue.

 

I was getting a "Unmountable Boot Volume" error occassionally when booting from WinXP Pro. I thought maybe an image creation and immediate restore might do the trick, but it didn't. If you have disk errors when you create the image, you'll have them when you restore it. To be expected, and it makes sense.

I had to boot from my WinXP CD and type "R" at the setup menu to enter the DOS prompt repair mode. Typed "chkdsk /p" and let it run. Then "fixboot" to write a new boot sector to my OS partition. Appears that it worked and I immediately made a new OS image.

I did a lot of prep work for a possible recovery before I used "fixboot" because I've read where it has trashed a lot of drive partitions.

Thanks for the replies!

 

Based on my experience with disk drives, my advice would be to replace any disk drive that is suddenly developing new bad sectors. Assuming that the new bad sectors are caused by physical damage to the drive platters, I would not trust any drive with my valuable data if it suddenly develops new bad spots. It could be a sign that the flying drive heads may not be flying as well as they should, and may have made contact with the platters. This could also be caused by external shock (G-force) to the drive during operation (laptop drives are more susceptible to this than desktops). It could also be a sign that the drive's air tight seal has been compromised, allowing the platters to be contaminated. With replacement drives being fairly reasonably priced nowadays, it is best to replace them at your convenience rather than wait for that total failure that will happen at the worst possible time.

-TomQ