Usage of B&R 2011

I am late to the B&R issue and am trying out Paragon B&R 2011.

I have a few questions for anticipated usage and would appreciate some clarification.

System 1: Win 7 x64 HP running on an 80GB Intel X-25M SSD. All programs and OS on this drive (plus whatever other data that certain programs don't permit me to store elsewhere.) Additional SATA mechanical drives for data and duplication. External SATA mechanical HD for backup.

I wish to test out how B&R works. I have a spare 150GB WD Velocirator (never used) that I'd like to use in place of the X-25M for testing purposes. Will the recovery format only 80GB of the WD VR 150GB drive to match the X-25M? If so, I suppose I will need to find a partitioning tool to merge the remainder of the drive into the 80GB partition in order to use the full drive.

Also, in the backup process, I have a choice of what parts of my C: drive (X-25M) to backup:
http://i.imgur.com/En7Gg.png

Is there any reason to check any less than the entire C: drive? What purpose does the First HD track serve? Do I need to check that too? Along with the MBR?

 

In the Restore wizard you can select the desired size for restored HDD\partition backup.
You can resize it to occupy the entire 150GB HDD capacity.

Option to resize during restore works from Paragon Recovery CD and from installed program.

B&R Free doesn't have option for resize, but Windows 7 has build-in feature to enlarge partition from Windows Disk management.

If you select entire Basic hard disk 1, then all mentioned parts of your original drive will be placed to archive.
It is recommended if you plan Hard Drive migration (like in your example) or for first initial backup.
If you select only partition (C: ) then MBR (Master boot record) and First Track will be skipped.
These 2 parts are very small and contain HDD specific information including partition table placed in MBR.
For regular system backup they're not necessary, but required for most accurate restore to empty HDD.

 

Thanks very much for the reply, Mech_An. (had to adjust my subscription notification as I did not get the notification of your reply.)

If, in my example, I were to decide to use that 150GB drive for a while and reinstall Win7/64 on the SSD over the course of time, I could swap SSD/WDVR as needs be... swap in the SSD to continue working on the install... and swap back in the WDVR if I need to use a program not yet fully functioning and tweaked on the SSD.

However, if I were to find that my fresh install of Win7/64 on the SSD was not satisfactory and decided to restore from my B&R data, it might be best to leave the partition on the 150GB WDVR alone (as the original 80GB image from the SSD). Would that be accurate? I assume the challenge might be how to restore an image from a 150GB drive onto an 80GB drive rather than the other way. Is that right?