I'm helping someone with their Windows 7 Professional SSD computer which just got a new solid state drive because the old drive broke. I have an image backup from the day the drive quit working and now want to restore it. The old drive had a C drive (mostly system files, some personal files) and a G drive (all personal files)

I booted using Macrium Reflect Windows PE recovery disk. I got as far as the "Restore" tab. I selected the latest image backup (differential) from October 4. The problem now is I am presented with 2 options under the Restore Image link. I looked in the help files did not find an example of having to choose from 2 disks - the help files made it look so easy. 

I have 3 screenshots here: https://goo.gl/photos/z7Q7i3br3N9EcX3x5

Under Restore Image are Disk 1 and Disk 2. 

If I choose Disk 1, the Source is:
1 - System Reserved (None) NTFS Active
24.6 MB

2 - (C) NTFS Primary
128.92 GB

There is nothing in the "Destination" area on the bottom half of the screen.

If I choose Disk 2, the Source is:
1 - New Volumne (G) NTFS Primary
449.12 GB

Destination is:
1 - New Volume (C) NTFS Primary
449.15 GB

What should I do? Can someone guide me thru this in plain ordinary language? 
Thanks

I know that they're called "drive letters", but if we're to avoid confusion we need to be very clear that they are actually assigned by the operating system to individual partitions (Windows calls them "volumes") that may reside on one physical drive or several.  Furthermore, physical drives may have partitions that are absolutely essential for booting the system but that have no assigned "drive letters" at all.

Since you are replacing a failed drive (i.e., the physical entity) you need to recover everything on that drive (i.e., all of its partitions regardless of whether they have so-called "drive letters" assigned to them or not).  So you want to select the backup image for the entire failed drive (all partitions) as the source and the new replacement SSD as the destination for the restore operation.  If the latter is not being seen by Reflect as an available destination, you may need to recheck its drive bay connections to the system board.

Regards, Richard V. ("Arvy")

Thanks Arvy.
Do I choose Disk 1 or Disk 2? (see my 1st screenshot). Or are you saying I should choose both Disk 1 and Disk 2 somehow at the same time? Or choose Disk 1 first, then later go and choose Disk 2? 

Under Disk 1, when I click "Select a disk to restore to" I see 3 options, Disk 1, Disk 2, Disk 3. 
Disk 1 is blue and shows the long string of numbers/letters that end with CC47. 
Disk 2 is gray and says it's the SSD Samsung drive. I presume that's the new drive.  
Disk 3 is blue and is the Seagate external drive F. 

The 3rd screenshot is confusing to me:
https://photos.google.com/share/AF1QipNjiG9dpMFHBX1uoPljtsHPyMXHT8OjoKelAT5Jh3dGb5656CWFPuJsD_OltASEsQ/photo/AF1QipOymfBoIFPzuaW1BdQySi6_sEUpiXkT1maFDkBk?key=Vi1VdTdSUUxvNFAyZ1dBNEhKMC1Oa1BmUlB6azB3

Is that showing that the image backup (on top) is the same as the destination (on the bottom)? If I restore that backup (shown as Disk 2 in my 1st screenshot), would it be restoring data into itself? Hmmm, it says "new volume C" on the bottom part. So if I restore, is it actually restoring to the new SSD? 

I quite deliberately did not specify which one because the only information you provided was that "the old drive broke" without saying which.  (SSDs can be almost any size these days.)  However, based on the fact that Reflect shows no pre-selected destination for the "Disk 1" image, I would assume that Disk 1 is the one that failed and needs to be recovered onto the new SSD.  That assumption is, however, offered "without prejudice" as the lawyers say.  You're in a better position to assess the situation than I am.

Regards, Richard V. ("Arvy")

The computer shop replaced the broken SSD with a new one. They told me everything (personal files and programs, etc) was lost. They did not install Windows. I assumed restoring the Macrium Reflect image backup would restore Windows and all the files and programs as they were before the drive broke. Sorry I don't know all the technical terms. 

Okay.  Well, you have nothing to lose by restoring the Disk 1 backup image (all of it) onto the new replacement SSD.  Try that first and see if it gets everything back to where it should be.  Leave Disk 2 untouched for now.

Regards, Richard V. ("Arvy")

Thanks much, will do. 

I ended up reinstalling Windows since I couldn't get the Macrium Reflect restore to work. It was very complicated. I had two separate drives: C and G. Reflect was unable to restore programs and settings to the C drive.

In G, all the personal files were still there and were not destroyed in the hard drive failure. I found out it was the C drive that had failed. Not knowing that the G drive was still OK, I tried to restore the MR backup to it. I saw a MR text file after doing the restore. However, upon examining the G drive and the Macrium Reflect backup files, the G drive had 2 files that were more current than what was on the backup. 

What does Macrium Reflect do when it sees that there are already files and folders on the destination drive? Does it skip restoring files? 

I'm very sorry to hear of your problems, but you really should not have had to reinstall Windows if what was restored to the new SSD was, in fact, a complete backup image of the old drive (all of its partitions) on which your operating system was located.  It may sometimes be necessary to run the "Fix windows Boot Problems" utility.  If, on the other hand, the restore operation recovered only the "C:" partition (i.e. without others such as the System Reserved Partition) that won't produce a bootable result.

That was the reason for the drive versus partition distinction mentioned in my initial reply.  And that is also why I suggested that you leave Disk 2 untouched and that you restore only the Disk 1 backup image (all of it) to your new replacement SSD as an initial step to see if it actually did put everything back to normal.  Doing that would not have overwritten anything at all and would have left all other retrieval options available.  When you restore a complete backup image (as opposed to selective restoration of files and folders) it replaces absolutely everything on the destination with what is contained in the backup image.  Reflect itself warns about that before allowing the operation to proceed.


Regards, Richard V. ("Arvy")