PMS Witch,
As usual your scholarly responses are priceless. You have given me a lot to investigate and digest.
The original hard drive is on a DELL Dimension 4600 that came my way with a blown PS and M/B (lightening strike). I found a replacement M/B, replaced the PS, and now the machine runs just fine as the original hard drive still works. I used its restore function to get rid of the crap the previous owner had installed, thus getting C: back to an exact version of the original factory installation -- just like new.
I also cloned the original C: partition (XXCLONE), cleaned out all of it craplets, and thus have a nice running machine, but this hard drive with the C: clone has no restore function. I want to pass this machine on to a relative but am too cautious to let go of the original hard drive with the restore partition. This is because, sure as heck, the new owner will experience a hard drive failure (he doesn't understand backups or cloning or imaging) and will expect me to restore everything as before -- which I can't do unless I have a complete clone of the original, including the hidden FAT partition with the restore software.
As I recall, when the restore function is invoked mention is made of a special piece of software that does the job. I can't remember its name off hand, but I know that getting the restore function up and running requires more than XP or DOS to make it work.
Thanks so much for your help. This will be an interesting project.
Dick |
