Linux command structure / syntax to copy Windows/7 backups I found on USB drive

Don't restore with Linux.

Boot with the Windows DVD, go to repair then select "Restore using previously created system image" then point to the USB drive.

HTH,
Dan

answering your original question

assuming that sdd1 is mounted and the disk image is available on /path/to/image

sudo dd if=/path/to/image of=/dev/sda

will copy the image to the first sata disk

if it is not a full disk image or you have several disks, you can use things like /dev/sdc2 to copy to the second partition of the third disk

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note that if you put your seven image on a usb drive, it won't boot unless it was previously hacked to load the usb drivers before mounting the disks. this may be the cause of your error

This was surprising since Vista was on another E Drive inside and not used since first upgraded to W/7

as far as i understand, you made a fresh install. at that time. the windows installer detected the vista installation regardless the fact it was not on the first drive.

this detection probably occurred because at the time the installer was launched, vista was on the first active partition (since the wd was probably not partitioned or formatted). alternatively, the windows installer may have progressed in existing OS detection since i last checked.

McAfee

unrelated but yiiiks. this is heavier and has detection rates much worse than most freeware AV

During online activity, suddenly again the old BSOD from which I could not recover and all the stuff posted before applies.

this can indicate one of 3 hardware-related things (at least)
- dead drive. given the circumstances, this is unlikely
- dying disk controller. not very likely either : it would not produce such a repetitive setup
- dead memory. does not seem very likely given the history but you can easily check that one

more likely, windows cannot properly figure heads and tails of your complex disk setup. maybe it got mixed by vista and somehow you performed an upgrade of vista on a different disk. maybe the drive detection order changes and windows gets mixed up (that one is quite realistic). maybe you have another software issue such as a virus, or an antivirus could produce by toying with the disk driver (much less realistic)

Was advise to remove all but the one drive on which I'm planning to install Windows 7 again, which I'd love to avoid

this is good advise because you may be working on a weird setup in which the boot loader is on your e drive while the os is on the c. you can always plug other disks afterwards.

before that i'd go for starting the machine with just the new drive and see what happens. you'll definitely get useful debug information.

Many of the LIVE analyses I've read in logs, etc. find 3 WD drives but don't all find the SCSI drives.  

whate are LIVE analysis ? antivirus ?

I hasten to add that using the Knoppix Live DVD and File Manager lets me view content on all drives, which leads me to believe that the drives are OK.  Maybe I can get to an elevated DOS prompt to run chkdsk /f or scandisk if that can help. ????

you can but you'll most likely be loosing time. the disk is fine and btw it is not all that unlikely that the previous was fine as well.

btw i do not think scandisk still exists (I thought it disapeared since NT and has no real equivalent, but should be present in many dos cds. the knoppix live cd has a small dos/freedos included that probably has it)

if knoppix sees the drives, and can read and write from them, they are likely fine. you can write a big file with dd and check for errors in dmesg. if the disk has problems you'll likely see tons of dma and/or "bad sector" stuff. formatting using ntfs (not the quick format) is also a good way to check for bad sectors, but will destroy the data.

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you should start debugging by removing drives :

if you have a hardware issue, it is probably unrelated to that drive. possibly a mess with the SCSI controller working erratically.

if you have a software issue, it is either a mess with a driver that gets corrupt, and/or a mess related with a weird installation with the boot loader on the wrong drive, possibly mixed with a race condition that makes the drive detection order inconsistent

either way, unplug drives and post results

Wonder if I were to remove only that WD drive and try to repair again if it would work to save my recent installations.  What do you think?  Hope?

possibly, but first start to boot with ONLY the new drive, and post debug info, then repair or reinstall, then plug other drives.

the fact that there is a boot manager on the second drive does not mean that there is none on the first. the above test will help clear the mess.

something in all my recovery efforts corrupted all kinds of boot files that are required

from my experience, recovery is hardly ever a good idea. better repair manually when you can and reinstall when you can't. most OSes ony provide manual recovery, or automate only very specific tasks and tell you what they do along the way. there is a good reason for that.

the only fully recoverable seven is a virtual one : VM snapshots do work as expected.

Using either Knoppix Adriane Live or UBCD tools to analyse the drives and content has worked for all the drives, but the content seems to vary, depending on what tools I use.  For one of the partitions on the WD drive where E and F reside (E partition had Vista, F partition data files)... the F drive only shows System Volume Information, as is true for the other smaller WD drive, both of which had more content and only show the System Volume Information.  There are 3 internal WD drives, the main new one with W7 which is 1.5 GV, one is the WD2500, data stuff and the other WD1200 has the old Vista and the two partitions above.

filesystems may be corrupted, maybe you mounted the drive as root and looked at the file as a regular user, lots of possibilities. i do not see what is different between a tool and the other in the above.

anyway, let's focus on the new drive for now

Other anomoly, when using the UBCD and the SeaTools to scan disks, it only showed the WD main W/7 1.5 TB drive..C drive and the two internal WD drives, none of the sCSI drives.

don't bother and forget what i stated above regarding scsi. that tool probably just does not have the scsi controller driver.

When you mentioned NTFS, I recall that on one of the many Startup Repair processes for Windows 7, the following were found to be root causes of boot failure and it was mfewfpk.sys reported as corrupt and repair action failed - error code = 0x2, and system restore also failed error 0x1f after an all night run and also states that ntfs.sys file corrupt but that Repair did fix this one.

looks like a system driver modified by macaffee that windows tried to restore to the windows version and... your system is already dead at that point.

How would I do this which you recommend?  you can write a big file with dd and check for errors in dmesg  Should I try this on all the internal drives before removing them to test?

no : that test is irrelevant now : your problem is definitively not a dead drive.

you should only plug the new drive, and boot, if you can't, boot in safe mode, if you still can't, reinstall (or possibly use the repair operation from the windows cd).

start there, tell me what happens and we'll devise a best course of action.

toying with repair tools and doing complex test is only bound to be time-consuming.

Also when you said  if you have a hardware issue, it is probably unrelated to that drive. possibly a mess with the SCSI controller working erratically.  Since the strange behavior on one of the last week's processes after the Windows 7 new installation there were driver detection problems for the Adaptec driver for the IBM SCSI drives, that could be a source.  But would that be likely to stop me from being able to boot Windows with all these errors and BSOD results?

hardware issue : i was wrong

driver issue causing BSOD : yes it is possible. next time it happens, try to unplug the drives, or boot in debug mode to make sure this is the cause of your problem.

And YES, thank you also for that; I understand I cannot boot from the USB drive.

actually it is possible with a registry hack to instruct the windows kernel to load USB drivers before it loads the disk drivers. (before that point, it uses bios calls to access the drive).

I'll try updating and copying the Driver files, especially for the Adaptec Ultra 160 drivers.

refer to what i said above : this is a loss of time : remove the SCSI card, get your system to work, then install adapted drivers the normal way, then plug the scsi card.

First Q

nothing interesting there, your cd image was corrupt ( i only read up to the link to the next question)

next question : looks like a corrupt disk sector or bad memory block at that time, possibly corrupt disk driver (maybe caused by mcaffee)... not enough information on the thread to be sure.