Restore X220 from vhd files when no partitions

[thinktwice]

Hi,

I have to restore an ThinkPad X220 (most probably buyed in the US) after a mechanical hard disk crash.

The customer had burnt a repair CD, and done two .vhd image backups.
The first VHD file is 348 MB and the second one of 199 GB.
From the partitions I assume it was in GPT and the first partition being an UEFI one.
The disk iself was 320 GB, and I assume they were more partitions, like a Windows restore image, and possibly other system partitions.

Unfortunately, I could not find any backup of the partitioning sheme and I don't know which was the size and order of the partitions.

Do I have to create a GPT partitioning sheme and create the partitions manually before restoring the .vhd images?
Or do the .vhd files contain in themselves some metadata telling where the partition should be created and its size?
Should I simply try restoring the 348 MB partition without any prior partitioning and then append some NTFS partition to it as target for the second VHD image?

If I have to "manually" create partitions, should they have the exact size of the VHD files ?
The exact size of the vhd files are :

Code: Select all

      364'998'656 bytes
214'241'308'160 bytes (214'241'308'672 bytes on disk)

If someone, using a bootable Linux CD or USB, could post either the output of "gdisk -l" for a ThinkPad X220 (4287-2WU) running Windows 7 Pro so that I understand how the partitioning was, or alternatively to post the header and trailer GPTs as binary images, it would be very nice.

I cannot simply reinstall a fresh Windows, because the customer wants its data.
Creating partitions and restoring the VHD files should not be an issue, but I need more a general advice about how to restore the previous partitioning sheme.

Thanks for your advices and support.

[kitor]

Here you have script to recreate UEFI default partition scheme:
https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/lib ... 25686.aspx

As you got 350MB, you'll need to adjust this scheme a bit.

(and also, I'll just drop this here, how to apply .wim / install Windows using command prompt )
https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/lib ... 25089.aspx

[RealBlackStuff]

Another way: http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/wind ... 0a7?auth=1