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    Windows 7 System Image restore...to SMALLER drive

    Discussion in 'Windows OS and Software' started by mvalpreda, Nov 17, 2009.

  1. mvalpreda

    mvalpreda Notebook Evangelist

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    Was having issues with Windows 7 so I put in another drive in my laptop and loaded up Windows 7 and got everything working perfect. I did a backup of the drive using the System Image option in the built-in backup utility.

    The drive that is "right" is a 160GB drive and I want to restore that image onto a 128GB SSD. I removed all the partitions on the SSD and tried to restore after booting with a Windows 7 DVD.

    I keep getting an error when I try to restore about not being able to restore to that drive. Any thoughts?
     
    mvalpreda, Nov 17, 2009
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  2. qhn

    qhn Notebook User

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    Your notebook model? Your restore configuration (USB external, where is your "image" being stored and accessed? ...)?

    cheers ...
     
    qhn, Nov 18, 2009
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  3. gerryf19

    gerryf19 I am the walrus

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    first thing i would do is using the 160gb installation, go into disk management and shrink the partition to about 100gb or so. THEN make the image. Then try to restore.

    There may be a different issue--given that it is a different drive type, windows may recognize this as totally different hardware and refuse to restore based on that (WGA)
     
    gerryf19, Nov 18, 2009
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  4. mvalpreda

    mvalpreda Notebook Evangelist

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    It was a space issue. I shrank the original drive, reran the backup and restored to the smaller drive fine.
     
    mvalpreda, Nov 18, 2009
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  5. surfasb

    surfasb Titles Shmm-itles

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    problem solved. But yeah, just shrink the partitiion and it restores like magic.
     
    surfasb, Nov 19, 2009
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