Windows 7 system image will this work?

[800bhp]

Hi all

I have taken a system image of my laptop which had a 160gb hard drive, to a separate external drive, the total used space of the image was only 25gb, I did this as the hard disk was beginning to get bad sectors.
I thought as I did not need 160gb I would buy a 80gb to replace it, and then found after trying several times, and research on the net, you cannot reinstall the system image to a smaller drive than the original (Thanks MS for not making that clear when I did the system image) So now I am stuck, the shop wont take the new 80gb drive back as its been opened, so I am trying to find out if its possible to use the system image I created with another software like Acronis, to put it onto the smaller hard drive.
Any help or advice would be great
Thanks in advance

 

[SledgeDG]

I never used that option, but it seems like it would do just what you expect.
Check with Acronis Support to be sure.

 

[mjf]

A round about way if you are desperate is:
1) Attach the original image under disk management.
2) Shrink the volume to fit your 80GB HDD. Say down to 70GB.
3) Image the new mounted image with Macrium Reflect.
4) Reimage with Macrium Reflect.
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Also,
I'm not sure if the Windows command line bare metal "wbadmin" image restore has the flexibility to do the job.