Windows 7: recovery to smaller hard drive

hp Windows 7 won't let me recover os to a smaller hard drive original 1ter to 250gig.

I think you're basically "stuck" at this point. Third-party products, from Macrium Reflect and from Paragon (and maybe even EASEUS) have add-ons that will allow you to "restore" to a smaller drive -- but they do so by forcing you to select which types of files will NOT be included in the Restore.

The only way (I believe) that you'd be able to use any of these is to make a new backup using their product.

But, I don't use the Windows 7 builtin backup feature -- so others here may know better about this.

Hello Tony, and welcome to Seven Forums.

Unfortunately, when doing a system image recovery, you will only be able to restore to a HDD that is the same size or larger than the one when the system image was created from.

Welcome Tonyspar to the windows 7 forums.

questions..
1. what size is your boot drive C:

One option that I have succeeded was to shrink my C drive to a smaller size
than what the max disk size was. Like if your boot drive is a 1 gig and you really only want to image the necessary files. You can shrink your C drive to like 200 gigs and then do the windows image to an external hard disk. Then when you go to restore, it should restore to any disk that is at least 200gigs in size.

Give it a shot as it should work.

Rich

A clean install may be more straightforward. If for you would like to move an old Windows image to a smaller HDD you can try this procedure.

When you made the Windows image you will find a number of vhd files equal to the number of partitions imaged.

1) Download Macrium Reflect V5 - free version. Make and check that the linux boot recovery DVD works on your PC. If not you need to make the pe DVD.
2) Go into Disk Management and attach the large vhd from the desired image.
3) Select the mounted drive and resize down so it fits well within your new HDD. Image this resized mounted partition with Macrium.
4) Prepare the new HDD by making 2 primary partitions. First 200MB and marked active.
5) Boot Macrium restore DVD and reimage the new HDD OS partition (the second partition) with the Macrium image. Make sure it is NOT selected as "active".
6) You will need to rebuild the system reserved partition. Make sure the system reserved partition is marked "active". Boot the Windows system repair CD and run the repair operation 3 times.
If this doesn't work then (& I prefer to do this) Boot the system repair CD and go into a command prompt and type:
>bootrec /fixmbr
>bootrec /fixboot
>bootrec /rebuildbcd
Then reboot.

You may need to regain a bit of unallocated space at the end of the new HDD.

mjf, this is a superb guidance. Would rep you but first have to spread some more.

@OP, if you use free Macrium, go with what mjf says. Else you can try free Paragon. That is able to resize - provided all your data fits into the target partition. Else you have to "lighten" the partition before you image it.