Restoring Win7 image backup to smaller partition?

I am sure the answer is out there, but haven't found an exact solution to this question, so...

I back up my System Reserved partition + C partition with both the native Win7 software (create an image file) and also, to be safe, with Acronis, creating the images on separate external USB drives.

My question is this: in the event of the drive on which I have my O/S failing (it's on an SSD, and I just had my other SDD fail on me) would I be able to restore one of the images - Windows or Acronis - to a different, smaller partition on a different disk, provided that the original, uncompressed size of the data on the original partitions is smaller than that of the partition I want to restore it to? In other words, if my current C drive is on a partition of 80GBs, but occupies only 40GBs of that - the rest being unused, free space, would I be able to restore one of the backup images to a partition of, say 60GBs? Or does the unused space 'count'?

Thanks,

Martin

OK, thanks. No, I haven't tried on the Acronis forum yet - I will. I'll have a look at the link to other software (Aomei - never heard of it) too. ..

Thanks!

The reason I asked is that my C drive is a 70GB partition (total size, with unused space) on an SDD. The rest of the available space on the SSD is a separate, blank, unformatted partition. Seems reasonable to use Partition Manager to add that unused space to the C drive.

Having recently had another SDD fail on the same PC though, I am keeping an empty 70GB partition on one of my HDDs so that, in the event of my O/S SSD failing too at some stage, I can restore an image of my C drive to it, and, hopefully, use that (+ the System reserved space) as my temporary boot partition. Would save a lot of hassle of reinstalling a new copy of Windows to the 'emergency' partition...

Of course, if I add the blank space to my C drive, it will be 110GBs, including unused space, and, well, hence my post! I guess if I use Acronis and then maybe Aomei instead of Windows 7 as my 'second line of defence', I should be OK...

M.