Imaging Inspiron Hard Drive Including 2 Hidden Partitions Then Applying to NEW Drive

Hi all,

I want to image my hard drive from dell using either Ghost 9 or Acronis True Image v9. Dell just sent me a new drive because I deleted my old drive completely (including the Dell Diagnostic partition which houses Media Center). After completly formatting the drive I realized that the MediaDirect button no longer quick booted Media Center...because that OS was housed inside the Dell Diagnostic hidden partition (I found out about this site a few days later btw). Well anyways Now I have a new drive (a refurbished drive from dell with original partitions) which I want to image and install to my old drive (the one with out the dell hidden partitons)

I was wondering if anyone had any advise on the easiest way to do this. I am unsure whether I have to make the hidden partitions show within Windows and then image them or if the software is smart enought to recognize them and include them in the image.

 

I imaged it using Ghost, and it seemed to include all hidden partitions as well - I've tested it and MediaDirect worked after I deleted every partition and then reverted back using the Ghost image.

I used Hiren's Boot CD 8.1, which contained Ghost, among a few other DOS tools. Anyhow, just popped the CD in, restarted the laptop, and then hit F12 to boot from the CD. From there just selected Ghost, did a Local > To Image, inserted a DVD, waited 1-2 hours, and voila!

 

there's a thread on how to fix your media direct partition if you search for it.

why would you replace your brand new HD with a reburbished one just because you deleted some partitions. sounds like you're short changing yourself bigtime.

 

I think he means he wants to image the new refurbished drive, which contains all the partitions, and transfer that to his old nonrefurbished drive.

 

ah ok, nevermind then.

i'll be back after i learn how to read

 

MSBSpectator thanks for the great info.

Well I downloaded Hiren's Boot CD 8.1 and using ghost created an image of the hard drive (all 3 partitions) and then verified the image. I then tried to recreate the partitions on my first drive and about half way thru ghost said that the image was corrupt and to run verification which i already had. So not sure what happened there...really sucks too cause image creation took up 3 dvds and i think 2 hours plus plus 2 hours verification. So then I went back into ghost and just tried a recreate the small partition which it did successfully. So now I had my 54 meg dell diagnostic partition back then I created a partition for windows and reinstalled windows. Then ran the dell media center fix and then booted into dell media center. I thought great it worked but it didn't completely for some reason when you go into the view pictures the c drive shows up but it shows no folders no images nor videos etc so something is still missing...

What a pain in the a$$. I am going to try imaging it now with acronis tool on that same cd see what happens...