I have been using Ghost for many years with many operating systems. However, it hasn't been for at least 8+ years since I've actually needed to do a restore. Now my Windows 7 laptop drive has crashed and I really could use some advice about what may be a complicated recovery.
My Panasonic Laptop CF-W8 came 2 years ago with a 160gb Vista drive. I reconfigured it to Windows 7 Ultimate, two partitions, with Win7 and most programs on C: (40gb), and most data and some programs on D: (120gb). Then I installed many panasonic drivers and much software and data. I have been diligently making Ghost 12 backups to two USB external hard drives. The most recent backup was an incremental done 10 days ago, before I left on the trip where the drive crashed.
Panasonic warranty support is sending me a replacement drive with that same old 160gb Vista partition. I would take days and many hours to reinstall Windows 7 and all the custom drivers, plus all the software (if I can even find all the cdroms). I am hoping I can do a full restore of both partitions using the Ghost cdrom and the external drive. I am just not sure how to do it.
I don't even know for sure what questions to ask. Possibles: Do I need to create the two partitions before I use Ghost? Do I need to upgrade to Windows 7 before starting the Ghost recovery? Or what?
I am also wondering about the EFS folders I had. If I can do a full restore of C & D, will the EFS folders work normally when I log on to Windows 7? I did export the keys to a USB stick also. But maybe that's a question for a different forum.
Thanks in advance for any suggestions or advice.