VanguardLH wrote on 11/7/2015 3:22 PM:
Cy Burnot wrote:

I created an image of my wife's hard drive and restored it to a new hard
drive.

Freeware or payware version of Reflect? The freeware version does not
do "bare metal" restores.

FREE.

Did you save a backup image of the old HDD (and restored it to the new
HDD), or did you do a clone? I'm not sure there would be much of a
difference other than afterward you would still have the backup image
versus a clone job which is immediate with not external backup image
file.

Backup image to a 3rd HD.

Is the new HDD inside the same box as the old HDD? Or is the new HDD
inside a different box?

Same box. Removed old HD. Replaced it with the new one.

I swapped out the old HD and of course it wouldn't boot, so I booted
from the Reflect rescue disk and selected the option to fix windows boot
issues.

Does "swap out" mean the new HDD was connected to the same SATA port as
the old HDD? Or did you disconnect the old HDD from its mobo SATA port
and continue using the other mobo SATA port for the new HDD? Connect
the new SATA HDD to the same mobo SATA port that the old SATA HDD was
connected.

Removed old HD. Replaced it with the new one. Same port as the old one.

When you want to use an HDD to which was restored an image or a cloned
drive in place of the original, plug it into the same port as the
original.

Did that.

I selected the view that shows all the HD partitions and I got what I
expected with one exception.

Partition 5, Windows8_OS did not have a drive letter. (Obviously, it has
to be C:.) I ran Macrium's checker and it reported no errors.

You sure that isn't the Windows 8 recovery partition?

Absolutely sure!

Could be that is
the factory image partition; i.e., where the restore image is saved.
Some computers come with a hidden partition where is the restore image
or a custom setup program to restore the OS partition back to factory-
time state. When you install Win7 or Win8, the default (when there are
no partitions defined except maybe the hidden factory image partition)
is to create 2 partitions: a small OS recovery partition and the larger
OS partition. The trick that I remember to get Win7/8 installed in 1
partition is to create a partition and have the Windows installer reuse
that one. The recovery tools for the OS are stored in a separate
partition so they will still be available in case the OS partition's
file system or files get corrupted or deleted. The OS recovery
partition is hidden: no drive letter assigned.

I also have several expected letterless partitions.

http://www.intowindows.com/how-to-de...-in-windows-8/
http://www.howtogeek.com/139710/remo...l-of-your-hdd/

The recovery partition (installed by Windows) is 100 MB in size. The
factory restore partition will be larger and its size depends on how big
is the restore image.

How do I assign a drive letter to this partition?

Maybe you shouldn't. What is the size of that partition? What are the
volume labels reported for the other partitions (with or without volume
labels)?

To make a long story short, I played with Reflect and eventually that
partition became C: and the computer booted. I didn't write down what I
did and my memory is no longer good enough to recall what I did.

I did a couple of shutdown-startups and a couple of restarts just to
make sure. Then I made an image of the new HD -- the whole thing.

Next is learning about differential backups ("free" doesn't do incremental).

Thanks for your patience.