replaced hdd and didn't copy recovery drive to new hdd

I had to install a new hard drive into my laptop
that is running Windows Vista Home Premium , it has an AMD Turion 64 X2 Mobile Technology TL-60 2.0 GHz processor; 32 bit operating system and 3gb of RAM.

I use Acronis True Image Home (this one is the 2009 version) to create my backups of the computer. After installing the new hard drive I used the Acronis program to reinstall the entire computer back to where it was before the hard drive was replaced. I used the last backup I had made to do this. However, when I made that last backup, for whatever reason I forgot to click to back up both the C drive as well as the D (recovery) drive. So now I have the computer back up and running but the recovery drive is not there.

I do have a backup with both the c & d drives, and most times I create my backups of both drives. But for some reason the last one I did I forgot to click on the d drive and that is the one that I chose when doing the install.

I went to computer>manage>disk management and it shows the c drive and unallocated space (which is where the recovery drive should be). I have attached a pic of what I see in computer management.

Is there any way to reinstall that recovery drive. There were lots of errors on the old hard drive – but they are all on the c drive and the d (recovery drive) is fine which is why I needed to replace the hdd to begin with.

I do have another backup that has both the c & d drives on it. I took the old hard drive, put it into and external enclosure and ran the WD Data Lifeguard diagnostics on just the D (recovery drive) and it passed all the tests. But when run on just the C drive there were all sorts of problems. I also ran checkdisk on the old hard drive – just selecting the D (recovery drive) and it passed so I know that there are no problems with the recovery part of that hard drive.

I am just wondering how I get the recovery part installed onto this new hard drive. Is there any easy way to do this or would I have to wipe the drive and then start over using the backup that does include both the c & d drives on it.

Someone had suggested using MiniTool Partition Wizard Bootable CD to wipe the old hard drive before returning it to WD since it is still under warranty (don’t want to send it off to them will all our personal info on the drive) When looking at that program it does do all sorts of things. I did see that it has an option to copy a partition http://www.partitionwizard.com/help/copy-partition.html but I am not sure if that will do what I want.

Any suggestions or ideas would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks So Very Much.

 

I would clear the drive with Partition Wizard bootable CD and start by restoring any older backup containing both partitions. Then use the latest backup to restore the Windows partition only, (the recovery partition will not have changed). This should work providing you have not resized either partition in the meantime.

 

Alternatively you could simply restore the recovery partition to the unallocated space. The function key that invokes the recovery process may no longer work if you do it this way, but setting it Active and rebooting is all that is required which you could do with the Partition Wizard bootable CD.

 

I have not resized anything at all. It sounds like the better option is to wipe the hard drive with that MiniTool Partition wizard and then install the acronis disk; restart the pc and do the whole process over again and then simply use the most current backup (which I will do before doing anything else) to restore the c drive to where it is now.

The alternative sounds like it would be quicker but if the function key might not work if it is done this way (although I don't recall ever actually using once of the function keys for anything - but my luck I would need to and it would not work) I might be better off starting all over again.

I wasn't sure if I could just take that recovery drive and copy it to that unallocated space or how to do that - which is why I thought that I had better ask before doing something and possibly making things worse.

I did make the cd from the .iso already so I guess that tomorrow I will try the long process and start over again.

Thanks for the help I really do appreciate it

 

I think either would work. When recovery is invoked at startup - something we hope never to have to do - all that happens is that the Active flag is moved from the Windows partition to the recovery partition, causing recovery to boot rather than Windows. We can do that with a boot disk, you don't HAVE to use the inbuilt method.

I too use disk imaging programs like Acronis and use them regularly, so I'm almost certain to be able to recover to an earlier state should that become necessary or advisable - like catching a nasty. So I just dispense entirely with recovery partitions and use the space for something else. OK, 12GB isn't a lot but on a small disk like yours worth saving imo.

 

I was actually more concerned about that recovery drive since I have had to use the startup repair in the past and I was guessing that it requires that recovery drive to work when I install the installation disk and select the system recovery.

As for that 12GB of space, it really isn't a big deal to me. The entire drive is a 250 GB hdd and I still have a little over 160 GB of free space of that 220 GB that is available of the c partition.

The computer is a few years old now and I honestly don't see me filling up all that space anyway. But just thought that I should have that recovery drive on that partition.

Am creating a new backup of the c drive right now and then when I get back home I will have to decide if I want to go with trying to just copy that recovery drive to the unallocated space or wipe the entire drive and start over again. Either way, doing this current backup is just for my peace of mind

 

Use Acronis to restore the recovery partition from a previous backup and all should be fine. Or is that what you mean by 'copy'?

 

Or you can just not worry and keep the recovery partition elsewhere. Unless I am mistaken the recovery partition will take you back to original and does not change like a backup. The only time you would use it is if you had no backup.

When would you use the recovery partition?
If you are at home you have the recovery partition, no problem.
If you are on the road the recovery partition will be of little value as you will be back to factory settings.

 

Okay, thanks!

I did run the MiniTool Partition Wizard yesterday (it was actually easier than I thought it would be )

Right now now I am doing the acronis to recover the backup that has both the c & d (recovery) drive on it and that will probably be done shortly (if I remember correctly, it didn't take long at all).

I did notice that it was showing the hdd as being 232.9GB instead of the 250GB that this hdd is. Did I do something wrong when using the MiniTool Partition wizard and lost some of the HDD or is this like any other external hdd or flash drive where the space is actually less than what it claims? I am guessing that the answer is that it is just like a 8GB flash that shows that there is a bit less than 8GB on the drive.


Once this is done, do I just restart the pc with the acronis disk in the dvd drive, restart the pc and then to the recovery for the backup that I had made of just the c drive the other day so that it is back to where it was earlier in the week or can I do that without the acronis disk in the computer?

Thanks Again for Absolutely Everything

 

well, I did wipe the hard drive clean and then started acronis and selected a backup that had the recovery drive on it. I did that, restarted the pc and both the c and d drives were there. I then started the pc again with the acronis disk in the drive and tried restoring just the c drive with the backup that I made earlier this week that was of just the c drive. It wiped the entire hard drive and I am now back to where I was to begin with when I reinstalled everything onto the new hard drive to begin with and no recovery drive :confused

I guess that I can't just recover the c drive to a newer backup without deleting that recovery drive.

Guessing that my only options are to leave it this way or use that older backup and then do the updates and everything else again. Oh well!

Thanks

 

At stage 2, restoring C only, you need to deselect 'disk' and select the partition containing the backup of your C drive. When you do that it may ask you where you want the partition restored, though as there is only the one partition big enough to accept it I think it will default to that, which is what you want. I recommend you start over exactly as with your first effort and then as above. That will work.

I can't give you a step-by-step as Acronis has changed a lot since the 2009 version.

 

I will try that. I did finally hear back from Acronis again and they were saying that

"If there is unallocated space the size of the need partiton, then you should be able to restore the partition, doing a partition restore to the unallocated. Use the backup with the diseied partitin and restore that one partition only, manually, to the unallocated space."

Since that unallocated space is the space that it should be for the recovery part of the drive I figured that would be easy enough since they told me that "If you manually restore, you can set the size for each partition. Select only the partition you want to restore.

When you backup a drive, you get all the partitions in the backup.

when you restore, you don't have to restore the disk; you can restore only selected partitions. That's what you want to do." but I cannot find any option for doing this and when I follow some of the steps given in the links that they gave me (which are for newer versions) I cannot restore the recovery drive to that unallocated space since it shows as 0 bytes available. I thought about trying to format that partition but don't want to screw with the drive and make things worse. I could find no information on the links that they gave me for Doing a manual restore to that drive (the recovery)

I think that I will go back and do as you have suggested instead. Will wipe the drive again and then restore with the backup that has the recovery drive on it and then follow your steps and hopefully all will be fine. If not - I guess I will just have to live without the recovery drive and hope that I don't get a message telling me to install the disk and do a startup recovery on the computer.

I can't believe I forgot to include the d drive in my last few backups (what an idiot I have been - and after all these years of backing up both drives!)

Thanks Again

 

I use Acronis to restore individual partitions all the time. It's a case of carefully studying the restore interface so that you are only restoring the required partition to the space it came from, and that you are not restoring the whole disk. It doesn't matter that the space is currently occupied by an earlier version of your C drive as the first thing Acronis does when restoring a partition is to delete whatever is there now.

I'm sure you will be able to do what you want.

 

There was a reason I suggested Everything rather than just using Windows search. It was possible that there are other partitions on your disk and the tech might have saved them there. Just searching C would not find them, searching with Everything would. But as you have spoken with him that doesn't sound to be the case though.

It's appalling, but the same goes for every trade, rip-off merchants everywhere. It pays to learn a bit about computers yourself.

 

@lmhjcr - ignore that please, I accidentally posted it in wrong thread :-o

 

Well, I almost did exactly what I had done the first time (which would have wiped out the first step where I had both the c and d / recovery drives). I stopped and then went back and started over again.

To be perfectly honest, I am not positive of how I managed to get to the screen that I ended up at but this time I was the screen that was similar to the one shown in number 3 of https://kb.acronis.com/content/2770 and this time it just copied the backup that I made the other day to the C drive and left the D (recovery) drive alone and I am now up and running with both the recovery drive and the C (primary) drive again.

Thanks Again for absolutely everything. You have been so helpful (and patient) with me. I am now going to wipe the bad hard drive and return it to WD since it is under warranty. I had the choice of returning the drive and then waiting for them to send me a replacement or buy a new one and then return the defective one for replacement. Didn't want to send it to them without wiping it clean first and didn't want to do that until I was up and running again (just in case I needed something off that drive).

Again, Thanks So Very Much

 

Good work! I used to use Acronis exclusively, as it has never once failed to successfully restore for me. However the user interface has always been less than intuitive, and I gave up on recommending it to others because so many of them had problems as a result. Also of course, it isn't free and they try to tempt you to get the latest version each year, but there are now several free reliable alternatives available and I have settled on recommending Macrium Reflect. Anyway, congratulations on taking this to a satisfactory conclusion.

 

As you can tell, my version is quite a few years old now and I refuse to get the newer version just because they come out with one every year!

Just another gimmick to get the consumer to spend more money! (at least in my opinion)

If you need to replace the hard drive and you do copy both drives (which I usually did) it takes no time at all to get your computer back up and running to where it was (took less than 15 minutes once I installed the hard drive).

But you are right about the interface being difficult to figure out. And they change that with each update too! I ended up getting the 2011 version for a friend and the interface was completely different from the 2009 version.

At the very least they really should make it easier to navigate - guess that is like wising for a million dollars to drop down from the sky and land in my back yard.

I will have to remember to suggest that others check out Macrium Reflect instead. Especially since it is free and none of us are made out of money!

Acronis is not cheap and if there is a really good alternative I will be looking into that as well for my next pc.

Thanks Again for Everything