windows image backup questions

[prc292]

I recently needed to do an image restore with windows 7 for the first time using the built in program. I got a new, larger Hard drive for my laptop and just wanted to restore my system from an image i had on a Usb drive. Unfortunately the restore failed and after some googling i found that some people were saying that you could only restore to the same drive the image was made from. I have a hard time believing this because it would just make the program useless in the case of a drive failure, and this is one of the main reasons for making a backup in the first place. Some people were saying that the distination drive/partition just needed to be the same size as the drive (or partition) the image was made from. I didn't try a resize, i just did a new reinstall (which is a pain). Just for future reference, has anyone heard any of this before? Should i be able to just restore to a new larger drive without any problems. I was thinking maybe this was some kind of anti-piracy precaution. Not sure

thanks for shedding any light on this.

 

[zzz2496]

I personally use Macrium Reflect for my backup/imaging for system drive... Few days ago I needed to restore the system to another disk (640GB) that's smaller than my current disk (1TB), and the restore went completely trouble free, and it was over the network... So, I don't know how you get this issue, but you can always try 3rd party imaging tools. Btw, Macrium Reflect is free for personal use.

I do have an image I created using Windows's Image backup... I haven't had the time to try and restore using it, so I don't know on that that front...
zzz2496

 

[LM2008]

I recently needed to do an image restore with windows 7 for the first time using the built in program. I got a new, larger Hard drive for my laptop and just wanted to restore my system from an image i had on a Usb drive. Unfortunately the restore failed and after some googling i found that some people were saying that you could only restore to the same drive the image was made from. I have a hard time believing this because it would just make the program useless in the case of a drive failure, and this is one of the main reasons for making a backup in the first place. Some people were saying that the distination drive/partition just needed to be the same size as the drive (or partition) the image was made from. I didn't try a resize, i just did a new reinstall (which is a pain). Just for future reference, has anyone heard any of this before? Should i be able to just restore to a new larger drive without any problems. I was thinking maybe this was some kind of anti-piracy precaution. Not sure

thanks for shedding any light on this.

I have done Image restores in different hard drive and worked 100%, my laptop had from factory an Hitashi hard drive, i did an image backup, then changed the hd with a western digital one, then restored everything.

What error message poppued up?