Recently trialling system restores on two different machines (testing) I went through the repair routine from Bootup-F8 option. The sbs back up is on USB. One usb drive for each machine. Now, I got to the "format and repartition drive" section of the wizard on the first machine. Note that it says DRIVE. This was ticked and greyed out. Inside I could select either of the two drives in the case. This was not the case for the other machine. The "format and repartition drive" section of the wizard was white and I could still select either or both internal drives. Can anyone advise why?
On the basis that I had data on the first machine (F:) I did not proceed - there appeared to be a chance that the DRIVE would be repartitioned. (C: E: & F:). As the second machine had the same partitions but only test data (not part of the backup) I went ahead on that one anyway. Good news ! Although obviously I had nothing to lose today.
FYI - only the C: and E: partition were recovered (System files). and importantly (to my surprise) Sample text files left in the root of the E: partition remained (i.e. that was NOT repartitioned in the process). The F: partition survived wholly intact.
I looked everywhere for confirmation on the forum before proceeding but no-one has confirmed the events as far as I am aware. I would like to know about the greyed (or grayed???) box comes from however.