Wanting to use unallocated space on my hard drive, any dos and don'ts?

Okay, apparently I the option I though was right didn't turn out to be, I think. How do I transfer the backup file from the laptop back to the desktop on Macrium? I don't know if this is the best way or not.

If you want the backup file on the PC, just copy it like you would any file over the network. The folder you backed up too, is public. You can just browse over there in File Explorer.

Also if the laptop is on wifi, it would be faster if you had a ethernet cord to attach it to the router/modem your PC is plugged into.

The best way I think would be to add the drive letter and copy just what you want back over. Copying the whole image will give you all the windows stuff and tons more that you dont want to copy.

Okay, I found an option to restore the backup image to my desktop through the network (Restore/Browse for an image or backup file to restore). It tells me to boot into Windows PE since the C: partition on my desktop is currently being used and it asks for a username and password. Is there something wrong?

If you restore that image you will restore it back to not working. It is an exact image of the non working drive you had before.

You will have to browse to the backup over the network. Right click it and explore image. Add the drive letter when it asks. It will open a window up showing all the folders and files just as they were when you could not boot. You will need to copy any data you want on your PC from there. There is no way to get back the programs working without installing them on the PC again. Any documents, music or pictures or videos you had on the backup will need to be copied over also if you want them. Anything you want from the hard drive that would not boot, will need to be copied over.

You cannot restore the image or you will be back where you were before the backup and needing to install Windows again.

Okay, I'm seriously not liking this. I'm looking up the backup file and I'm not seeing any files or folders that have my stuff I had before. I'm afraid that the merge screwed up even worse than I thought and somehow it didn't save the information regarding the files I had before the merge on the former D: partition but just left the used hard drive space indicating it was there before.

If there's no way I'm getting my old files back then I am really disappointed.

I think they are still there. They might be renamed with something added to the end. Instead of Documents it might be Documents.xyz (just an example with xyz). You could alternately search for something you know is there like a certain document, song or picture and see where they are.

Access Denied said:

I think they are still there. They might be renamed with something added to the end. Instead of Documents it might be Documents.xyz (just an example with xyz). You could alternately search for something you know is there like a certain document, song or picture and see where they are.

Oh, you're right! There's a folder called merged_partition_content that I just looked into that shows all the files and folders from the partition! And I thought it was all over.

Nothing like that feeling of seeing the data you thought was lost forever. I know how it feels to lose data. I had a drive crash in 2003 that I will never forget. Every picture, song, document, you name it... POOF GONE when a hard drive died. I keep a backup of all data now since that day. I felt like I had lost a child at the time


EDIT: It was over 7 years of data I lost in that ^^