15 minutes restore.. just an illusion..... :-(

[ITGS]

It's 1 a.m.! I'm working by 4 hours trying to restore an old server hd in a new bigger one and different (old was samsung and new is a wd).

The hd has 4 partitions: C: (boot,s.o.), 1 extended with 3 logical (D:,E:,F:) I made a disk copy backup, saved all 4 image files in an hd external usb. 

Then I connect the new hd, disconnect the old, boot from cd system recovery manager, load the driver and recovered the disk.

All seem to work fine but, when I restart the server, the only thing that happen is a beautiful black screnn with cursor blinking on the top left side of the monitor.

During the recovery procedure, I set the first partition (C:) like "Bootable" and "restore originale disk signature".
I tried also to check the restore mbr but nothing change.

I'm a little bit angy... could yuo help me to understand where I am mistaking ???

Thank you

[Blinky]

I would restore just the C Drive partition again. I have had it in the past where I have inadvertantly ticked the 'make volume bootable' on one of the data volumes.

[teiva-boy]

 I assume you've never tested a restore before with a known good backup?  

While simple to use, when done in the right steps, and the steps are followed, it really does take as little as 15 minutes to restore a volume...  But do it wrong, and there is a lot of reboot, try again, reboot try a different setting, until one gets it right...

I've always said, you don't buy backup software to backup.  You buy backup software to restore!  Thus, everyone should test how to restore and document it.

[ITGS]

Hi Teiva-Boy!

I understand what you mean. I don't think to be the smartest guy in the world in IT but it's not the first time I used recovery backup software.

I want to remember that a "small business solution" is intended for enviroment where there is no high level specialized IT manager and where the need is often simple.

I can't understand how it's possible that a simple drive backup operation from an older to a new one (with different specs), could be so difficult to understand or to explain with some little examples in documentation.
.
I'm talkin about signature, mbr and boot options and their relationships with the restoring process.

I want only replace an old drive smaller with a new bigger and resize it proportionally!
Maybe I'm stupid, but i spent hours trying options and, finally it works, but i was not able to resize the sistem partition (and I don't understand why!).

I don't want test the options !!!! It's not my job ! I want read somewhere what I need to do !

I'm tired to read only cold tech docs that explain things that are not related to real world.

I'm not interested about what is MBR ! I want to know if I need to set or not the MBR options when I want to restore the bootable C partition in a new drive and to know what to do about drive signature !!!

Please forgive me for the polemic, but I'm really tired .....