questions about disk partitions

[ginahoy]

I want to test a backup image of my primary drive with WinXP by restoring it to an unused partition. For purposes of my test, I want to set the restored partition to be active in order to verify I can boot from the restored image. I use Acronis True Image.

I don't really understand partitions, so I have some basic questions. Here's my configuration (all partitions formatted FAT32):

Drive 0 - Primary (active, system, 80GB)
Drive 0 - Extended - logical drive (16GB)
Drive 0 - unallocated (138 GB)

Drive 1 - logical drive (active, 32GB)
Drive 1 - logical drive (117GB)
Drive 1 - unallocated (0GB)

I need 13GB to restore the image. Since my operating system resides on Drive 0, the safest option would be to restore to Drive 1, but that drive has no unallocated space. So my first question: is it possible to reduce size of an existing partition without without destroying the data? I have plenty of free space on the 117GB logical drive.

If that's not possible, I need to determine the best strategy to restore the image to Drive 0. I believe True Image allows me to redefine the extended partition as active at the time I restore the image. Likewise, it can create a new partition from the unallocated space.

In either scenario, won't I need to temporarily change the drive letters around since all the programs on the image are all configured for C: ?

Thanks,
David

[Midknyte]

That wouldn't work. You'd have to modify the boot.ini because the drive position would change. Normally, you're supposed to test the restore to the same drive/partition location.

You can shrink partitions, but there is always a chance you'll lose data. If the data is important, make a backup.

[BipolarBill]

You're doing this the hard way. Even if you do get the image restored to a partition, it won't boot without manually editing the BOOT.INI file. If you're having difficulty with finding a partition, editing the BOOT.INI file is gonna completely stump you.

Back up your primary drive to an image. Restore your image to the primary partition and test. Restore your current image when you're ready.

[Ol'Tunzafun]

If you have used Acronis to "Validate" your image, it will be fine. If you haven't, you should do that before doing anything else.

[ginahoy]

Based on your replies, I should have provided additional details...

TrueImage already reports the backup I want to restore is 'corrupt'. However, there are tons of reports over in the Acronis forum of false validation failures (e.g., True Image reports image is corrupt even when it's not). Some have postulated that this problem occurs most often with backups stored on an external USB drive. Copying a backup file to an internal drive sometimes solves the problem. After thousands of reports of this, Acronis still seems uninterested or unable to resolve.

In my situation, I wanted to roll back my primary drive by several days to help troubleshoot a series of unexplained glitches that suddenly cropped up on my computer last Tuesday. This should isolate the problem to software or hardware. Restoring the image to the original drive should have been a quick low-risk process. It has turned out to be anything but.

Because I only do a full backup every month or so supplemented by frequent incrementals, if my current set is corrupt, I'd have to roll back more than a month, which would probably be more trouble than it's worth in my situation.

In any case, I decided to check all of my backups yesterday. To my horror, TI reported every one of them is corrupt, going back more than two years! On the other hand, I've done successful image restores from these very backups on at least three occasions without incident. This gives credence to the claims made by many folks over in the Acornis forum.

To make an even longer story shorter, it turns out that by simply unloading my virus software and removing 2GB of Ram, all my my backup files now validate as ok, that is, except for the most current series. That would be my luck. Perhaps the series is really corrupt. Or perhaps not. Interestingly, I'm able to 'mount' the image and use Explorer to view and copy individual files. But that doesn't prove the image isn't corrupt.

After reading all of your comments, I don't want to risk either of my existing drives. It seems like the safest way to check the image would be to restore to a spare drive I no longer need.

Thanks again for your advice.

David

[BipolarBill]

Good idea. :)