Hi, Tom.

...is that new drive going to boot on its own,...

No. The "Boot" partition contains ALL of Windows. (It's all in the
C:\Windows folder tree.)

But the "System" partition is the one that tells the BIOS where to find the
Boot partition.

It is entirely possible for a single partition to be both "Boot" and
"System". That's the way it always was - by default - until Win7. And it
can still be that way if we plan for it and install Win7 with that in mind.
But when Win7 Setup.exe installs Win7 onto a "virgin" computer - which is
what an OEM does for computers that are sold with Win7 pre-installed - then
Setup creates that "System Reserved" partition and makes it the "System
Partition". So if that small partition is deleted or reformatted, the
critical startup files are missing and the computer cannot even start, much
less find Win7's Boot partition.

This System/Boot partitions dichotomy is not new; it goes back to at least
WinNT 4.0, which I first encountered in 1998 when I started dual-booting.
The specific contents of the System Partition changed from the
NTLDR/Boot.ini system, used from WinNT 4 through WinXP, to the BCD (Boot
Configuration Data) and bootmgr, beginning with Vista, and then added the
separate System Reserved partition in Win7. Even now, though, if we ADD
Win7 to a computer that already has Windows (XP, Vista, Win2K...) installed,
Setup will detect the existing installation - including the existing System
partition - and will just update the startup files on the partition, rather
than create the new System Reserved partition.

....

I'll quit here, Tom, since I see you already have several good answers. But
I had this much typed before the wife said let's go out to lunch...and I
hate to let it go to waste. Hope it helps. ;)

RC
--
R. C. White, CPA
San Marcos, TX

Microsoft Windows MVP (2002-2010)
Windows Live Mail 2012 (Build 16.4.3503.0728)) in Win8 (RTM Ent Eval)



"SC Tom" wrote in message ...

I recently bought a new Acer Aspire V3 laptop that came with the Win7 64-bit
setup partition. I ran it, installed Win7, cleaned all the crap off I didn't
want/need, and installed some of the programs I wanted on it (still more to
go- that's an ongoing thing, IYKWIM). After I got things the way I wanted, I
booted from my ATI CD to create an image of the whole drive, including the
hidden "PQService" recovery partition, the 100MB "System Reserved" one, and
of course, my C: partition.

The question I have is, if I just created an image of the C: partition
without the other two partitions, and restored the C: to a new drive, is
that new drive going to boot on its own, or do you think I'll have to run
Startup Repair to do it? In Disk Management, the System Reserved partition
just says "Healthy (System, Active, Primary Partition)", whereas my C: says
"Healthy (Boot, Page File, Crash Dump, Primary Partition)". That leads me to
believe that C: will boot on its own, but just thought I'd ask the opinion
of others here.

I haven't tried deleting the 100MB partition as per the instructions he

http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/kb/article.php?id=409

since 100MB one way or the other is not really taking a bite out of my 500GB
drive. If I get to the point where I need that 100MB, I think it'll be time
for a new, larger drive :-)

TIA!
--
SC Tom