Thinkpads Forum

Goal: Replace OEM 160GB drive with 500GB WD Scorpio Black and still be able to use recovery partition for future disk restores.
Problem: Got the partitions cloned and boot sector, etc. restored, but unable to access the recovery partition.

Method: Using Acronis TI 11 Home Edition bootable media, I took a full disk backup (TIB archive) and saved it onto a USB attached disk. Then I removed and replaced the original OEM drive with the larger drive. When restoring the images, I first restored the recovery partition and did not resize it. Then I restored the C: partition and re-sized it to use the remaining empty space on the disk. Finally, I restored the boot sector, etc.

Upon first boot, got the error "bootmgr is missing". So I booted from a Windows 7 Enterprise (32bit) trial disk and ran a boot repair. I had to do this twice. The first time I fixed some stuff (presumably it discovered the boot entries, etc.), the second time, it replaced a corrupt or missing bootmgr file.

Now when I boot up, I can access Windows 7 just fine, but there is no longer any second entry in the boot menu for the recovery partition.

Anyone have any suggestions for how to restore this?

This is solved. I discovered my error.

Everything I did was correct except for one very significant step which was missed:

When restoring the MBR and Sector 0, I failed to select the check box marked "Restore disk signature". So, what probably happened is Acronis assigned a new disk signature and as a result Windows bootmgr could not be found (probably because the master boot record referenced a disk signature which no longer existed).