Windows 7: System image restore on empty external drive

System image restore on empty external drive I made a system backup of my C:
system partition with Windows 7
backup and restore facility on an
external disk.



Now I bought another external disk
and wanted to restore my backup to it to test the restoration on
an empty disk ( for the case of disk crash or when buying a new SSD and
adding it to the computer ).

When I boot from the Recovery CD
and try to restore the image I can exclude my current system disk and keep only the external target disk. But then I get an error message, which tells me that the
restoration misses a disk. I suppose the excluded C:-system disk.

So is there a way to restore the
image to a disk other than the current disk with the running C:-system ?

Not to a External Drive.

System Image Recovery

Good answer ! So my project with external disk is damned to failure.

But what about my project to add an new SSD as a second drive and then
restore the image of my nicely running system to this SSD.

Can I somewhere choose the SSD as target or must I remove my current
internal drive from the computer so that the restore has no choice.
But I have also some doubts that the restore to a smaller say 128GB SSD
might be not possible. Any hard facts ?

You may find going to a smaller HD may not work.

Your new HD would need to be the first drive. (SATA1=Disk0=New HD)

The first part of your answer is what I read in another forum. I have to keep in
mind to decrease my system partition before I take the system backup.

I have no experience with the SATA-hardware. If I understand you right there
are several SATA connections inside the computer and I have to reconnect
the current hard disk to SATA2, for instance ?

Does it work, if I change simply the boot-up sequence in the BIOS settings
to SSD first and internal hard disk third after the DVD ?

Yes, just change the bios boot order. Disk 0 , Disk 1, etc only indicates which port you plugged it into - nothing to do with the boot order.

As was said, with the image you have to restore to a partition that is equal or larger in size than the original - but it must be C, thus an internal disk.
For what you want to do, you need to make a clone with e.g. Acronis or Norton Ghost. But for your SSD project, I recommend you use Migrate Easy from Acronis. It was designed for that purpose and allows you to move your C to the SSD even when it is USB attached (which is an important feature for laptops that have only 1 bay).

Looks like the trial version has no function limitations - works for 15 days, so it's worth a go: Trial Version Limitations of Acronis Products | Knowledge Base

Pardon, but I want to use the Microsoft backup and restore feature.
Nothing else, no Paragon, Acronis, DriveImageXML, Macrium, ...

Another question : can I simply make a restorable system backup by using
simple copy/paste with Windows Explorer between the internal system partition
and the external disk drive partition ? So completely without any backup program ?

In case of crash of the disk I would use the boot with the installation DVD, repair
computer and the from the command prompt an xcopy back on the new disk.

Take look here:

Restore Backup User and System Files

Windows Easy Transfer - Transfer To & From Computers