BleepingComputer.com: Had to replace the HD in my Dell 1420 notebook. Bestbuy did the warranty work. The drive does not have a D drive partion like it used to have.

Unfortunately my hard drive failed when I was out of town and had to have my family take it in. I had backup files I created with the spotmau program that had both the C and D drive letters. I now only have a C drive listed and am unsure what to do. I am not very experienced with the deep end of the partion stuff. I have been using the laptop for a month now and have transfered as much of the fileinfo that they were able to save. I don,t want to do a restore if it will mess up what I have now but I am concerned that I will not be able to save properly for recovery later. I am trying to get to a point that I can create a hd image to save for the next crisis. I have a 320GB HD in the Laptop and a 500GB external drive That I would like to create the image on and then set to the side for that day when I have to restore to a new HD again. I am looking for some guidance so that I will have the ability to do this stuff myself. The HD hardware is not reliable as you folks probably already know. Even with the warranty it still costs alot of money. Thanks in advance for your help. Beryla