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I have a 500 GB drive that I have made a system image of.

I would like to move that to a 250 GB drive (because it is a Solid State drive).

I have made a Windows 7 Backup Image of my 500 GB drive. I am currently only using 163 GB of that drive. Can I just restore that to the target drive or will the restore be expecting a 500 GB drive?

If it is expecting it I can shrink my partition to less that 250 and backup again. But I would rather not if that is not needed. Will the restore realize that it is not using all the space and just take what it needs?

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You cannot move the image to a smaller partition space using W7 image software, you will need a 3rd party image software to do this.

http://social.answers.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/w7repair/thread/91f3faf8-3a41-498f-972d-29d95a06e29b

Free imaging software http://www.macrium.com/reflectfree.asp

Since you are moving to a SSD, it would be wise to install W7 clean and transfer your data using Windows Easy transfer, first run easy transfer on your older installation to back up your data, then run it again on the clean install on the new drive to import that data.

Programs will need to be reinstalled.

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    Reinstalling is what I am trying to avoid. (I don't have a lot of data, but I have a ton of installed programs.) Will moving to a SSD cause problems if I just restore my non SSD image to it?
    – Vaccano
    Jan 10, 2011 at 18:44
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    I agree with @Moab your best course of action is to suck it up and do a full install. Simply put you have to take into consideration the partition table, sectors, alignments, etc. with a SSD. Don't get put off it is worth the fresh install. Just remember to partition with gparted or something similar before hand as Win7 will take 100MB for bitlocker no matter what if you format with the Windows installation disk.
    – user61724
    Jan 10, 2011 at 19:32
  • @Vaccano, it might, Windows 7 turns off some tasks and other features when it knows it is installing on a SSD.
    – Moab
    Jan 10, 2011 at 20:41
  • @DanM. Do SSDs have different sector alignments that make it more difficult to clone from HHD to SSD?
    – Jason
    Apr 23, 2014 at 3:32
  • Could a full reinstall be an issue with an OEM Windows?
    – Jonathan
    Aug 14, 2015 at 3:08

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