SDD+HDD Combo, HDD crash, clean install OS SSD?

[jason11]

Hello,

I have a SSD+HDD combo, and the HDD crashed. I'm waiting on the new one to arrive. Windows and a handful of other things were installed on the SSD, most programs were installed on the HDD.

I have a full backup of my system via Windows 7 backup.... but it is a couple months old and I have changes and modified programs since then.

The setup was...

SSD
C: Windows, Chrome, Video drivers, 1 game

HDD (Crashed)
E Partition: Steam, Origin, few other games, MS Office, Chrome downloads, lots of small programs
F Partition: Data, documents, few games

My concerns....

NOT clean installing OS on C: Possible registry errors since many of the programs were modified/updated, some programs I didn't have installed when I did my last backup.

Clean installing OS: Writing data to SSD lowering lifespan, possibly more headaches

Additionally, I've never used Windows 7 restore, so I'm sure there are some things I need to know.

 

[RealBeast]

Don't worry about how much you write to your SSD -- you won't wear it out for 10 years from any of the torture tests I've seen. I use an SSD as a scratch disk to rip BluRay disks so I write 100Gb a day to it and after 5 months it doesn't show any aging according to its test information.

You could do a clean install, but I don't think it is necessary -- just reinstall the programs that were on the HDD to the new HDD and that will do. Windows 7 is far more resilient than XP was. I would not try to do any kind of restore though -- just do the re-installations and make a new backup.

 

[fantastik250]

Just re-install programs to your new HDD and create a new backup for it.

 

[jason11]

Thanks for the reply.

I have a question regarding Windows restore:

I went to the advanced restore, and could select basically any program from the C drive on my backup. Reading some info on sevenforums, I believe I will be able to see the data from the E and F drives as soon as I install the new HDD (E) and make a partition (F.) I assume this because the data for each are in a different VHD in the backup image folder. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

Is there a way to simply restore the data from just the E and F drives (or the drives the completely) from a windows 7 backup without touching the C drive?

 

[fantastik250]

I haven't encountered your particular situation before. You can try it, but make sure you backed up any important files you want from your SSD to a flash drive or something like that. Let us know how it went. I am curious to see if you are able to retrieve data by doing your method and restoring onto your new drive.

 

[RealBeast]

Thanks for the reply.

I have a question regarding Windows restore:

I went to the advanced restore, and could select basically any program from the C drive on my backup. Reading some info on sevenforums, I believe I will be able to see the data from the E and F drives as soon as I install the new HDD (E) and make a partition (F.) I assume this because the data for each are in a different VHD in the backup image folder. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

Is there a way to simply restore the data from just the E and F drives (or the drives the completely) from a windows 7 backup without touching the C drive?

While it is possible, it is not probable that it will work with complete success. Probably worth a shot though once you back up important data to somewhere other than that computer.

 

[jason11]

Ok, I got the new HDD in.

When I go to "Select another backup to select restore files from," I can only see backup of "C:" and can only select folders from my C: drive. (C: is a 64gb SSD)

When I made the backup, I did not select E: and F: (my old harddrive + a partition.) But the reason why I thought I may be able to recover files is because the WindowsImageBackup folder is 275gb... when my C: drive was only 64 gb.

I'm assuming there's at least some of my old HDD on that 275 gb backup. Is there anyway I get access data, or is it not possible and/or not particularly usable in this form?

 

[RealBeast]

You should be able to access the image backup files a number of ways, including a couple described here: http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/24771-system-image-extract-files-using-disk-management.html

 

[jason11]

That's exactly what I needed, thanks RB.

The vast majority of programs seemed to work fine by simply copying the data from the VHD to my HDD (I was worried since most installed programs split between C and E+ if you install on a secondary+ harddrive... at worst they had to auto update.