Ongoing attempt at Windows 7 C Drive Restoration, help required

I'll try to summarize everything that's happened so far. I am using Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit SP1.
If you do not care for historical summary I have titled the problem I am currently stuck at near the bottom of my post. It involved using Partition Wizard.

About over a week ago I rebooted my PC and was greeted with a S.M.A.R.T error signaling that my harddrive is bad and is failing. I only have a 4 year old 1TB Seagate Barracuda harddrive split into 4 different partitions. So that means my C drive was also at risk. Using defraggler, I noticed the poor health of my drive indeed, and the lost sectors were increasing. The first thing I did was run a chkdsk on my c drive. The lost sectors stopped increasing, but the damage was already done.

My plan was to get a new drive(s) to replace my old failing one. I got one Solid State Drive (Kingston ssdnow v300 240 GB) to serve as my new C drive, and a 1TB Seagate Barracuda HDD to serve as a secondary internal drive. After backing up all my other non-system data (pictures, movies) and uninstalling any program I didn't need (like games), I created a System Backup image of my current C drive on an external 1TB harddrive in an attempt to restore my old C drive so I would not have to reinstall Windows 7. Naturally I also created a System repair disk, and checked that it booted fine from my CD drive.

I installed my new SSD into my computer and initialized it for use, then disconnected my failing HDD from my MOBO. Everything was going to plan until my attempt to restore System Image via repair disk, which didn't work. I learned that apparently, if the maximum capacity of the C drive that the system image was made from exceeds the maximum capacity of the new drive you are trying to restore the image to, it won't work even if the system backup image itself is smaller (in this case 108 or so GB). In my case, the partition size of my C drive was originally 250 GB in capacity, and my new ssd is 223 GB in capacity after installing.

So what I do is go back to my failing harddrive, and attempt shrink my C drive partition from 250 GB to at least 220 GB. So that I could create a new System Backup Image. But I can't do it with the default Windows Disk Management due to system files getting in the way of shrinking. I have read many suggestions on using Partition Wizard Free Bootable CD to shrink partitions from outside of Windows 7 via bootable CD.


Here is the problem I am at right now:

So I download and make a bootable disk for Partition Wizard and boot from it. When I attempt to shrink my C Drive volume, it runs for awhile before pausing, aborting and giving me an "Error 19 ntfs file system error" and suggests I use its System File Checker on the drive. However, this option is greyed out on the menu. Searching online reveals that Partition Wizard's system file checker can only be used on drives that are lettered. But wait, all my partition are for sure lettered! I mean we're talking about my C drive! I have not found any explanation on why Partition Wizard is not displaying my drive letters in the list. But I have read suggestions to do a chkdsk instead.

For those curious on how I do the chkdsk, I got onto windows, right click my C drive and enter properties then click the Check Now button. It won't run while windows is running of course, so I have to reset my computer for chkdsk to run on my C drive.

So I do another chkdsk on my C drive once more and attempt again to shrink my C drive via Partition Wizard, but once again it gives me an "Error 19 ntfs file system error" message and does not display my drive letters nor let me use its System File Checker.

For now, I am attempting a chkdsk on my other existing partitions of the same failing HDD, thinking that perhaps those are affecting it. But I am having trouble as my failing HDD is now periodically "disconnecting" and freezing up windows, causing a need for hard reset.

I am aware that I could, and should reinstalling a fresh windows 7 now, but I would like to know what options or help I have left. If you need anymore specific info on my problem or computer hardware, please ask and I'll do by best to provide.

You could mount the windows system image .vhd file ( using diskpart ), then make an image of the mounted vhd using another imaging program,.

You should then be able to restore your newly created image to the ssd.

You can use this freebie for the image and restore process:

Windows 8.1, Windows 8, Windows 7 Free Backup and Restore Software

Sounds like you will need to do that from bootable media.

If you can get into windows 7:

First install aomei, and tell it to make winpe recovery media.

then you can mount the .vhd using disk management.



Make sure it has a drive letter, image it with aomei.

You can restore the image using the aomei winpe media.

Glad it worked for you.:)