Can't create "system restore image" from SDD to HD

I have 128gb SSD as primary hd ( C: ), I just put in a 320gb hd as a secondary ( D: ). When I run Win 7 ult "create system image" to create an image of C: onto D:, it gives me the message that you can view in attached image. I have a total of 74 gb of data on SSD and 295gb available on the HD, following this message would mean that I could never fill up the SSD if I want to be able to create a system image and always have 50 gb available on it. What am I doing wrong?? Help?
Thanks in advance.

 

The problem may not be with the primary partition on your SSD, but with the MBR partition (Master Boot Record). I've had this problem intermittently and it really pi$$es me off. Pretty much, a system recovery from image may cause the MBR partition to have extra data in it, thus not enough room for the shadow copy. Go into Disk Management and see how much free space is in the MBR partition. There are a lot of threads in different forums about this issue. Some solutions, but none really worked completely for me.

I save my system images to my 2nd internal HDD all the time. Have even restored directly from it. When I restore though, I have to check to make sure my MBR partition looks correct. If not, then I restore again. Otherwise, if I don't prevent the problem from happening, I won't be able to do a backup image later and will have to restore from the other image and lose everything in between.

It's definitely a Win7 backup issue.

 

Definitely sounds like a Windows 7 backup utility problem.

Have you tried Acronis True Image? You can download a 30-day trial. I have never had a problem using Acronis as an imaging tool.

 

Sorry, had to remove image till I get home. Anyway, yeah, I have used it before but I thought that I would actually take advantage of having the Win 7 Ult. "create system image" do this on a timed interval like every month or every three. I have read up on it since I posted and apparently there are bugs in it(Win 7). So I may just do Acronis after all.

 

You won't be sorry with Acronis. Very easy to use and works great. I backup entire SSD image to a .tib file on my external backup drives... I've restored to various different SSDs and HDDs of different sizes no problem. Most recently restoring an entire drive image of a SSD system drive to a 500GB HDD just so i could easily do some experiments without screwing up my real system drive.

since we're on the subject of backing up.... a fast external drive and eSATA connection are a real blessing. My back ups about 60GB from my system drive to the external drive in about 10-15 minutes to the fastest partition of a 500GB density plater.