1. The partition to which you restore a Macrium image must be the same size or bigger than from where the image was taken. If for any reason the partition is smaller, you have to resize the VHD of the image.
2. You do need the recovery CD - best is the WinPE version. Else you have no means to restore your image(s).
What I did was put the 2 drives into the system, then let Macrium do the partitioning and copy.
Then pull out the old drive and the PC boots up on the new drive.
I needed no images and no recovery cd.
I knew there was a method like that. I used to do that with the disk manager that came with the new drive.
It was easy to do.
And it booted up with no problems at all.
Macrium will clone partitions, including the sizes.
The new drive has to have the same or more space as the old drive.
You can tell Macrium to enlarge the partition or you can format the leftover space as a new partition to do with as you wish. I think win7 can also resize a partition.
One advantage is you can make an exact system copy like a snapshot for backup to save in case your running drive foobars itself. When it does, you will appreciate having a backup to put in. IT wont have recent changes. For that use a sync cloud service, like google drive or ubuntu one.
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