Restore option from external USB HDD unseen

Greetings,

Long story short, I've recently installed Win7 onto partition 3 of my SSD. I have a Win7 image I'd like to restore from on an external HDD via USB onto this partition. While Computer recognizes the external drive, System Restore does not. System Restore is trying to look on the network for the image, but it should see it on external.

I'm not even certain Win7 can restore from an external to the same partition Win7 is running on; seems likes its trying to overwrite itself as it runs the process. Any assistance with this would be much appreciated!


Long story long, I own a MBP 5,2. Yep, I know, boo! I once had it working great with dual-boot via BootCamp with OSX and Win7. Needed Linux for a CompSci class and tired of small virtualization and slowness. Decided to triple-boot under the notion of the glorious LifeHacker article: How to Triple-Boot Your Mac with Windows and Linux, No Boot Camp Required

After many feeble attempts to not erase my already existing Win7 partition, I did. Thought I could simply shrink Win7 partition with DiskManagement (what a chore that was) and create 40GB partition for Linux, but Ubuntu installer wouldn't recognize partition (only 200GB OSX and 280GB Win7). OSX also only recognized two partitions, despite Win7 recognizing itself as 240GB. Win7 DiskManagement could see several including the smaller "unused" partitions for system/boot stuff as well as the 10GB Linux Swap partition that the article recommended. After much screaming and headbanging, decided to make image of Win7 on 1TB external HDD and SysRestore disk. Deleted my Win7 partition after that with DiskUtility on OSX partition. :C

Did it work? Of course not! The whole process of triple booting from dual booting has been "Can't get there from here!" literally at every step of the process. Been using VBox for Ubuntu to do class assignments; still very much a chore. Used Mac DiskUtility to quad-partition 480GB SSD: 200GB OSX, 240GB Win7, 30GB Linux, 10GB Linux Swap. This, of course, erased my beloved dual boot partitions. Tried to install Ubuntu; kinda worked (much-needed Wifi not working). Tried to use SysRestore disk to install Win7 image onto 240GB partition, but SysRes disk only recognized SSD as single partition. Couldn't selectively choose partitions. Thought maybe I should use Win7 install disk instead. Able to choose 240GB partition, at least. But now, it won't let me restore image from external.

Good grief! What a tragic saga this has been!!!