Shadow protect recovery options

Question:
I have Vista Ultimate 32-bit and am running SP 3.0 Desktop.

I want to know which restore options I should use among restore MBR, restore disk signature and restore disk hidden track.

Answer from Official ShadowProtect Help file

" Restore MBR - Restore the master boot record. The master boot record is contained in the first sector of the first physical hard drive. The MBR consists of a master boot program and a partition table that describes the disk partitions. The master boot program looks at the partition table to see which primary partition is active. It then starts the boot program from the boot sector of the active partition. You can restore the MBR from the image file that was saved with the backup image or you can restore an original Windows MBR.

§ Restore disk signature - Restores the original physical disk signature of the hard drive. Disk signatures are included in Windows Server 2003, Windows 2000 Advanced Server, and Windows NT Server 4.0 Enterprise Edition (SP3 and later) and are necessary before the hard drive can be used.

§ Restore Disk Hidden Track - this will restore the first 63 sectors of a drive. Some boot loader applications require this for the system to boot."


Answerer from Nate at SP forum:

http://forum.storagecraft.com/Community/forums/t/146.aspx

If you're restoring the image back to the same disk and partition from which it came, you generally don't need to restore any of those things (you don't need to restore the MBR, or the hidden track sectors, or the disk signature). If you're restoring to a different disk on the same machine, then definitely do NOT restore the disk signature. The decision on restoring the MBR (which restores the MBR code section only) and hidden track sectors is whether or not you have custom MBR code, such as a fully pre-boot disk encryption product, etc. If you just have the standard MBR, then you generally won't need to restore the MBR or hidden track sectors. If you're restoring to a different machine then I generally recommend that you do check all three (restore disk signature, hidden track sectors, and disk signature) as well as check the HIR option during restore.



If you ever boot your restored OS and it comes up to a blank screen (not a blue screen, but a black screen), or gives you any ntldr errors, then just boot your windows install CD and specify that you want to use the Recovery Console and then within the recovery console execute "mbrfix /drive 0 fixmbr" and "fixboot C:"