SeaGate DiscWizard questions

Is it possible to ONLY image ONE partition of my hard drive? I have an 80 GB HDD in my laptop, and it is partitioned into a 66 GB C drive and a 12 GB recovery partition. I want to be able to ONLY image the C drive and ONLY restore C drive, in the event that I get a new laptop, I don't want to replace the new recovery partition with the one from my current computer. Can I do this with DiscWizard?

Yes. Just in case you haven't installed it yet and don't know, Disk Wizard is now a "lite" version of Acronis True Home. It will allow for full disk or partition backup and recovery (using the recovery disk that you can make with it). The lite part comes in in creating backups, you can only do full backups, it won't allow for incremental backups. There is some other reduced functionality, but for what you are looking for, it is more than sufficient.

Ok, so if I get a new laptop and I want to only restore my C drive with the data on it, then what steps should I follow? I'm not quite sure.

As long as the new laptop has a Seagate or Maxtor hard drive in it (forgot to mention that the version that comes with Disk Wizard only works if there is a Seagate or Maxtor drive in the system) , shouldn't be any problems. After you install Disk Wizard/True Home, select Backup and follow the wizard and select the drive/partition you want to backup; good idea to create the backup on an external drive if you have one, or only have one drive in the computer as depending on the size of the partition/drive being backed up it can be fairly large.

Then to image the backup you just boot from the recovery disk made with True Home, it will run another wizard and point it to the backup you made.

Well, what I'm doing is, I saved the *.tib file to a Seagate external hard drive. That's why I'm using Discwizard in the first place. So I could just boot up with the bootable media from Discwizard and select the *.tib off my external HDD and write it over my C drive in a new computer, right?

You can, and then probably find that Windows is unbootable due to all the new hardware; even more so if it is from one laptop to another. Best thing if that is the case is to try using Windows Easy Transfer (can buy the cable or just network the two together),

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-vista/get/easy-transfer.aspx

and transfer over what you want that way. Then once you have the new laptop setup the way you want it, use Disk Wizard and make an image of the new computer.

It is possible to move Vista to new harware using the Paragon Adaptive restore - it's not free tho. It is available as part of the Drive Backup and Hard Disk Manager series :

Paragon Drive Backup - disk and data backup, hard disk imaging

I doubt that applies to oem pre- install versions of Vista.

If you have a retail version of Vista - you should be able to move it that way- and it will need activating on the new machine - again you need the retail version to be able to activate it on a different machine.

Hope it helps.

Thanks Storm, hadn't thought of that. So it let's me transfer my programs and settings too? (DOES it tranfer programs? Or only the settings? )

@SIW: Does the free version work for that?

If you mean Drive Backup 9 Express - it does not have that feature

If you use Windows Easy transfer - you will need to reinstall your programs

Windows Easy Transfer is a wizard that helps you transfer the data that is important to you, including:

• User accounts
• Files and folders
• Program data files and settings
• E-mail messages, settings, and contacts
• Photos, music, and videos
• Windows settings
• Internet settings

Programs (applications) are not transferred.

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-vista/features/easy-transfer.aspx

Yep... see... that was I was trying to avoid... *sigh* OH well...

Hi,

you could try this - free from the nice people at Paragon.

Download and it burns itself to a cd - boot from that:


Boot corrector

• Search for valid Windows installations (Windows 2000/XP/Vista/Server)
• Correct drive letters in the System Registry of a selected Windows installation
• Correct “boot.ini” on selected disk
• Correct Boot Configuration Data (BCD) files for partitions on selected disk or for partitions on all disks
• Correct the Master Boot Record (MBR) executable code
• Reorder primary partitions (change primary slots)
• Correct the boot record for a selected Windows installation (increment the Serial Number, correct the partition offset, make a copy of the boot record, correct the Bootsect.dos file if exists)
• Set an active partition
• Hide/unhide partitions
• Change Serial Numbers
• Change Partition IDs
• Display the MBR in a more understandable format
• Display partition properties
• Create, display, save or print a boot correction report
• Adjust OS to boot on new hardware (Windows Vista only)

FREE Rescue Kit Express - Free Download!

If you restored an image to new hd there won't be a Vista compatible mbr or boot sector, also, the bcd entry will be wrong, and it will need to adjusted to boot on new hardware.

The bootdisc above can do each of those - it's a big ask to get all three steps to work out .

Would be fascinated to know how you get on.

What are you planning to about activation?

I'm beginning to think that even with all the trouble of uninstalling and reinstalling, Easy Transfer might be the better option... I'll figure it out I guess. Thanks for the advice though.

Shame - I wanted you to try it.

Whatever you do grab the free boot disc, it also has a file transfer wizard and partition undelete wizard - you may need it in future.

I also strongly recommend you get this - I have had it for a while - excellent on Vista and Win 7 32 and 64 bit. It's only free today so grab it while you can.

Giveaway of the Day - free licensed software daily. Paragon Partition Manager 2009 Special Edition (English Version) - Paragon Partition Manager is the most reliable and complete drive partitioning tool available in the market today!

See posts 3, 4 and 5 here:

Paragon Partition manager 2009 free today - Windows 7 Forums

Yeah. saw that on lifehacker. Already got it. And got a boot disk through Seagate's DiscWizard