Creating a bootable drive from an old backup

Factual Questions
1

Hi everyone. I have a question about making a bootable drive. I made a full backup of my system drive a while back. I copied everything to an external disk. Now I want to be able to boot that exact image again. Do you know what I need to do?

I have a new disk that is totally clean. I also have a 2nd computer that I can plug the new disk and the external disk into. I assume I’ll need to partition and format the new drive. Once I do that, can I just copy the system to the new disk, put the new disk in the primary computer, and boot it? Anything special I should know about?

2

Assuming a Windows O/S, copying files from one bootable hard drive to another hard drive does not make the second hard drive bootable. You have to clone the contents of the first hard drive to the second hard drive, using Ghost or similar software.

3

Exactly. You have to clone it, using ghost or similar, to get a duplicate drive. Secondly, just by cloning it as such, you start dancing on the edge of violating a TON of your software agreements. If you ever use both drives at the same time, on 2 machines like you state, you violate EVERY software agreement that you make. Your windows license, for example, is for ONE PC (and sometimes one laptop). By running it on a second machine, you’ve violated your terms of agreement.

4

Depends on how you made the backup.

You need to install your backup software on to the 2nd computer. Add the backup drive and new system drive. Partition and format the new system disk. Run the backup tool, open the backup file, and select the new drive as the restore target. You may need to repair the MBR with a fdisk <driveletter>: /MBR

Your backup tool should do the rest.

If you just copied all the files to create your backup, you are probably out of luck - it is almost impossible to recover a working system from copied files.

Si

5

to the op trying to clone drive for the purpose of setting up additional machines is one of the more commonly encountered forms of piracy in the biz. The scenario you are giving might work with the same or an identical machine but moving to different hrdware will not work.