The Windows "system image" utility will not allow you to restore the data to a smaller hard drive. I went from a 150GB C drive on my mechanical hard drive to my 80GB C drive on my SSD and even though I had only about 15GB on the drive...I was not able to image it. Reinstalling was a piece of cake with all of my data on the other drive, so I just reinstalled and then ran "system image" when complete.
So what you say is that windows restore feature don't let you change hdd to smaller one, even if partition in back up files is smaller then new disk?
It doesn't really make sense to me. Example:
someone has 1TB drive. 3 partitions: system - let's say 100GB, important things - 50GB, and all other trash - 850GB. He makes backup of partition 1&2, but not 3 as it's huge and not that important. Disk breaks down.
Now you need to buy another 1TB disk (even if there is only 150GB to restore) to get your data back? In the name of what?
mpol,
Glad you got the SSD setup and working like you want it.
Some of the Windows system functions are limited due to the results of anti-trust law suites. MS has tried to include everything a computer user might want, with their deep pockets (lots of money) other software companies have said this isn't fair.
This is just my opinion.
For example, Disk Management can not move a partition to the left. Other disk management programs can do it easily. Can Windows, yes, are they allowed to, no.
I haven't tried Windows image backup, for this reason. Other programs (many free) do a very good job of image backups and restore, disk management and many other functions. This is good for all computer users, as competition makes better products at a better price.
For simple backup and disk management Windows works very well. If you need more, there are many free programs to choose from, also many paid programs that do even more.
So, don't blame Windows for not being able to restore to a different sized partition. They can do it, just aren't allowed to.
Still I can't see the resason that windows can't make 100GB partition on my ssd drive. Ssame size, same data, just different hdd. Something really possible when your hardware goes down. Maybe the reason was that I had 100GB free space before system partition (left over from old partition). This way windows would need to 'move' system partition to the begining of disk, which as you say is not allowed. Strange restrictions for me. Can't see reason to limit partition expanding to the left, and allowing to the right.
You can do it easily with the free program Partition Wizard.
A good free backup image program is Macrium Reflect.
There is a good list of free programs tested to work with Win7.
FREE Great Programs for Window 7
Hope this helps.
unfortunately, the Windows 7 backup/recovery tool only works for restoring onto the exact same hardware (including the make, model, and size of harddrive) that you took the image of.
Any change in configuration, even trying to restore onto the same size/type harddrive from a different manufacturer, will result in this 0x80042412 error.
Then all you could do would be to reinstall Windows, reinstall all the programs,
and then recover your files onto the new system (hoping that you made backup copies of those in addition to the system image).
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