Shadowprotect - Restore Options Question

I was trying out Macrium Reflect and did a full backup before with SP.
While i was restoring with Macrium Reflect i canceled the restore because i didnt want to wait more. I already had made an impression about Macrium.
So i canceled the restore with Macrium. What are the best options to select in the Restore (with the boot-cd) in SP?



Should i select all options available? Set Partition Active, Restore MBR, Restore Signature, Restore Hidden Track? Or none?

I made restores before without setting these options. But now im not sure because i canceled the restore with another product. Looking at the manual seems there is no side effect using all options

Thank You

 

I always restore mbr from the image file. This mbr was backed up during the time of image creation.

Restoring original windows mbr will load the mbr that was installed during a fresh install of windows.

Restoring disk signature is only needed for servers, so it is not needed in your case.

Restore hidden disk sector is only needed if you had a hidden track to begin with. Some software utilities create a hidden track and if you do not restore it, that particular software will not work.


In the end, for typical scenarios, you only restore the mbr from the image file.

 

Thank You. I'm going to do that right now.

 

All good.
One question about the restoring of the MBR.
If i don't select to restore the MBR from the image, it wont restore the MBR to its original state stored in the image? For example i get a MBR rootkit. If i dont select that option it wont delete the MBR rootkit? Or is that option more interesting while restoring to other hardware, partitions etc.?

Thank You again.

 

That option is for advanced users. Suppose, you have an image that is only a day old and since then you have made some changes to the mbr, but you are confident that even after those changes, the day old OS will boot fine, so in this situation you do not restore the mbr.

And yes, if you are infected with a mbr virus etc, it will not be overwritten. SP will restore all sectors of the drive/partition except the first sector.

Like I said, it is an added option for advanced users and most of the time it is preferable to restore the mbr from the image file, if you desire the disk/partition to be an exact replica of that point in time.

 

should be the same Mbr image and original mbr or for xp and vista?

because the recovery cd is based on vista

 

The mbr in question is the mbr on your disk. If it XP's mbr, SP will restore that mbr. If it is Vista's mbr, SP will restore that.

 

yes thanks
i mean

should be the same of mbr

i don't see different between

 

mantra,

It will be same if your current mbr is the same as windows original mbr. For example, if you have installed a software that has modified your mbr, to work properly and then if you restore the original windows mbr, that particular software will not work.

 

Wow i didnt know that. I thought that a full restore from a full backup would be in fact a full restore with a (clean) MBR. Thats very interesting and scary at the same time...

 

Most backup utilities do not even provide you with options like SP. They will simply restore the mbr that was recorded at the time of image creation, by default. In that case, if you believe that particular mbr was infected, you can restore the original windows mbr by using that option from within your backup utility separately, or by using the windows installation disk.

SP provides you this option before the restore process even begins.

Also, if you image your system when it was infected, regardless of the fact that the infection was in the mbr or system files, and you restore that image, you will restore the virus too. This is the default behavior of all sector based imaging utilities.

 

All clear.
Thanks