You have made a full system backup of your hard drive . After a few years of heavy use your PC’s hard drive eventually crashes, and now you need to restore your Backed up data to a replacement drive. Unfortunately, your data transfer to the replacement drive is not going as planned.
Hard Drive Detection Trouble
Most backup and restoration programs require that the target hard drive (the drive to which you plan to restore the data) have a MBR (master boot record) or GPT (GUID or global unique identifier partition table). These are types of markers that show the PC what portions of the hard drive the system should read when the PC boots up. (They also show where the OS (operating system) is stored). Typically, new drives aren’t initialized with either an MBR or a GPT, and you’ll need to run a bootup application to set up the drive.
If you use Windows’ built-in system backup tools, you’ll need to insert your backup media and press F8 to load the System Recovery interface.
At the ‘Advanced Boot Options’ screen, use your arrow keys to highlight ‘Repair Your Computer’ and press ‘Enter’. Click ‘Next’ enter your user name and password, and click ‘OK’. Select ‘System Image Recovery’ and follow the on screen instructions to restore your copy of Windows.
With most third-party restoration applications, you can insert the rescue media and it will start the pre-boot application. For example, with ABSplus Rescue from CMS (www.cms.com), you’ll need to insert the ABSplus Rescue CD into your disc drive and press the key that starts the BIOS (Basic Input Output System).
Typically, that key is the DELETE or F2 key. If those keys don’t do the trick, watch the screen during startup for instructions (or consult your computer’s manual).
When the BIOS opens, change the boot order so that the PC boots from the CD/DVD drive and select Save and Exit. When restarted, CMS loads its installation application, during which you can select the hard drive and backup copy you want to install. Once done, CMS ABSplus Rescue installs the partition records and begins transferring your backup to the new hard drive.
Recover Specific Files
The full system backup didn’t transfer all the files you wanted. Most system backup applications provide a way to recover specific files or folders from a complete backup, allowing you to still recover key documents, photos or other data. The file level restore also comes in handy if you’ve installed new applications and created new files since your last backup and only want to rescue a few files that were accidentally deleted. Many third party restoration tools allow you to mount an image of your backup files, where you can search through the folders using Windows Explorer to recover the files you need.
To rescue specific files from Windows Backup in Windows 7, click the ‘Start’ button, select ‘Control Panel’, choose ‘System And Security’. And click ‘Backup And Restore’. Under the Restore section, click the ‘Restore My Files’ button and select ‘Browse For Files’ or ‘Browse For Folders’, depending on which options is more suitable for your restoration. Then you can double click the disc drive (or another drive, if you have another target in mind for external storage) and drill down to find the files or folders you want to restore. Select the files and folders, then right click the ones you want and click copy. Next, open a folder on your new hard drive, right click anywhere in the folder, and click ‘Paste’. Your files will now copy to the new drive.