Windows 7: Need help with transfer my windows 7 drive to a different drive

I have 2 drives: c: which contains the windows and d: for everything else.

1. I've used "backup and restore" and created drive image on a usb hard-drive.
2. i've formated drive c: booted with "ubuntu" and copied all my flies to c:
3. i've booted with windows 7 installation disk and started "recover my computer".
4. the image i've created (that i have on the usb drive) successfully recognized.

now, to the problem. as I mentioned, i want to restore windows 7 on my d: drive but anything I tried failed.
when the 2 drives were connected together i excluded drive c: (because i want all the files in this drive) but it could't install and it told me it failed.

I've tried keeping only one drive connected (the one i want to install windows on it) - failed. it told me that a drive with the backup information is missing.

i tried to exchange the connection of the drives (sata0 <--> sata1) - still not working.

finally i had no choice and I restore everything like it was before - this was the only thing to start windows again.
so eventually I didn't do anything, back to normal.

please help me understand what went wrong.
drive d: (the one I want to transfer windows into) is not empty, maybe I should format it or delete the partition to make unallocated space?



10x.