A hidden partition may be created by the PC manufacturer for diagnostics or system recovery. Users of Windows 7 and Windows 8 usually have the hidden System Reserved partition. Recovering a backup of a system disk with a hidden partition requires that you to take into account some additional factors. First of all, it is necessary for the new drive to keep the physical order of the partitions that existed on the old drive. In addition, you should place the hidden partition in the same location - usually at the start or the end of the disk space. To minimize the risk of possible problems, it is better to recover the hidden partition without resizing. Here we describe recovery of a system disk with Windows 7 and the hidden System Reserved partition.
Attach the external drive if it contains the backup to be used for recovery and make sure that the drive is powered on. This must be done before booting from Acronis rescue media.
Arrange the boot order in BIOS so as to make your rescue media device (CD, DVD or USB stick) the first boot device. See Arranging boot order in BIOS.
Boot from the rescue media and select True Image.
Select Recovery®Disk and Partition Recovery in the main menu. Choose the image backup of your system disk that you want to use for recovery.
Before continuing with the recovery, you need to know the sizes and physical order of all existing partitions. To see this information, click Details on the wizard's toolbar. Acronis True Image 2014 displays information about the backup. This includes a graphical view of all partitions the disk contains and their physical order on the disk.
Select Recover whole disks and partitions at the Recovery method step.
At the What to recover step, select the boxes of the partitions to be recovered. Do not select the MBR and Track 0 box, because this will result in selecting the entire disk for recovery. Recovering the entire disk does not allow you to resize partitions manually. You will be able to recover the MBR later. Select the partitions and click Next.
Selecting partitions leads to appearance of the relevant steps "Settings of partition ...". Note that these steps start with partitions which do not have an assigned disk letter (as usually is the case with hidden partitions). The partitions then take an ascending order of partition disk letters. This order cannot be changed. The order may differ from the physical order of the partitions on the hard disk.
You can specify the following partition settings: location, type, and size. You first need to specify the settings of the hidden partition (System Reserved partition in our case) as it usually does not have a disk letter. Because you are recovering to the new disk, click New location. Select the destination disk by either its assigned name or capacity.
Clicking Accept returns you to the "Settings of partition 1-1" screen. Check the partition type and change it, if necessary. You should remember that the System Reserved partition must be primary and marked as active.
Proceed to specifying the partition size by clicking Change default in the Partition size area. By default the partition occupies the entire new disk. You need to keep the hidden partition size unchanged and place it in the same location on the disk (at the start or the end of disk space). To do this, resize and relocate the partition by dragging it or its borders with a mouse on the horizontal bar on the screen. Or you can enter corresponding values into the appropriate fields (Partition size, Free space before, Free space after). Click Accept when the partition has the required size and location and then click Next.
Specify the settings for the second partition which in this case is your system partition. Click New location, and then select unallocated space on the destination disk that will receive the partition.
Click Accept, check the partition type (change, if necessary). The system partition must be primary.
Specify the partition size which by default equals the original size. Usually there is no free space after the partition, so allocate all the unallocated space on the new disk to the second partition. Click Accept and then click Next.
Carefully read the summary of operations to be performed and then click Proceed.
In the case being described (recovery of the System Reserved partition) steps 10-12 are optional. You need to perform them when recovering a hidden partition created by the PC manufacturer.
When the operation finishes, proceed to MBR recovery. You need to recover the MBR because the PC manufacturer could change the generic Windows MBR or a sector on track 0 to provide access to the hidden partition.
Select the same backup again. Right-click and select Recover in the shortcut menu. Choose Recover whole disks and partitions at the Recovery method step and then select the MBR and Track 0 box.
At the next step, select the destination disk as the target for MBR recovery, click Next and then Proceed. After MBR recovery is complete, exit the standalone version of Acronis True Image 2014.
Windows should not "see" both the new and old drive during the first boot after recovery because this could result in problems booting Windows. If you upgrade the old drive to a larger capacity new one, disconnect the old drive before the first boot.
Switch off the computer, if you need to disconnect the old drive. Otherwise, just reboot the computer after removing the rescue media.
Boot the computer to Windows. It may report that new hardware (hard drive) is found and Windows needs to reboot. After making sure that the system operates normally, restore the original boot order.
