From what I am reading on the internet you can just replace the current iastorac.sys file. I am not familiar of what this file compares to. But, should be easy to back up. My guess it's a page file. Delete and restart the computer.
From just the details of the problem. It sounds like your laptop booted from that 4gb drive and registered itself in the system of the operating system partition. I am pretty sure in the registry. It just created a user profile. Something similar to ...
Maybe. It sounded like you are having problems with the virtual boot. If you mean to say that your problem is the actual host system. Then I can assume I can blame the update services or something like that. Your host system can have some hidden issu...
Learn how to delete system and back up partitions on hard disks. You may sometimes exceed the allowed amount of system partitions on a hard disk. I assume the 'clean' way should work.